ON  THE  STAIRS 

HENRY  B. FULLER 


On  the  Stairs 


On  the  Stairs 


by 
Henry  B.  Fuller 

Author  of  Lines  Long  and  Short 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

(g&e  fttoetffte  prc«#  CambriDge 
1918 


COPYRIGHT,   IQiS,  BY  HENRY  B.   FULLER 
ALL  RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  March  igi8 


r 


AUTHOR'S  NOTE 


THIS  volume  may  seem  less  a  Novel  than  a 
Sketch  of  a  Novel  or  a  Study  for  a  Novel. 
It  might  easily  be  amplified;  but,  like  other 
recent  work  of  mine,  it  was  written  in  the 
conviction  that  story-telling,  whatever  form 
it  take,  can  be  done  within  limits  narrower 
than  those  now  generally  employed. 


586610 


ON  THE  STAIRS 
PART  I 


IN  the  year  1873  — 

No,  do  not  turn  away  from  such  an  open 
ing;  I  shall  reach  our  own  day  within  a  para 
graph  or  so. 

In  the  year  1873,  then,  Johnny  McComas 
was  perfectly  willing  to  stand  to  one  side 
while  Raymond  Prince,  surrounded  by  sev 
eral  of  the  fellows,  came  down,  in  his  own 
negligent  and  self-assured  way,  the  main 
stairway  of  Grant's  Private  Academy.  For 
Johnny  was  newer  there;  Johnny  was  younger 
in  this  world  by  a  year  or  two,  at  an  age  when 
a  year  or  two  makes  a  difference;  and  Johnny 
had  but  lately  left  behind  what  might  be 
described  as  a  condition  of  servitude.  So 
Johnny  yielded  the  right  of  way.  He  lowered 
his  little  snub  nose  by  a  few  degrees,  took 
some  of  the  gay  smile  out  of  his  twinkling 

[    1    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

blue  eyes,  and  waited  with  an  upward  glance 
of  friendly  yet  deferential  sobriety  until  Ray 
mond  should  have  passed. 

"How  are  you,  Johnny?"  asked  Raymond 
carelessly. 

"I'm  pretty  well,"  replied  Johnny,  in  all 
modesty. 

In  the  year  1916  — 

Yes,  I  told  you  we  should  reach  our  own 
times  presently. 

In  the  year  1916,  then,  Raymond  Prince 
was  standing  to  one  side,  whether  willing  or 
not,  while  John  W.  McComas,  attended  by 
several  men  who  would  make  their  cares  his 
own,  came  down  the  big  marble  stairway  of 
the  Mid-Continent  National  Bank.  Ray 
mond,  who  had  his  cares  too,  would  gladly 
have  been  included  in  the  company  (or, 
rather,  have  replaced  it  altogether);  but  he 
saw  clearly  that  the  time  was  not  propitious. 
McComas  looked  out  through  this  swarm  of 
lesser  people,  half-saw  Prince  as  in  a  mist,  and 
gave  him  unsmilingly  an  abstracted  half -bow. 

"How  do  you  do?"  he  mumbled  imper 
sonally. 

[     2     1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

"I'm  pretty  well,"  returned  Prince,  in  a 
toneless  voice.    But  he  was -far  from  that 
whether  in  mind  or  estate. 

Between  these  two  dates  and  these  two 
incidents  lies  most  of  my  story.  Be  quite  sure 
that  I  shall  tell  it  in  my  own  fashion. 

n 

First,  however,  this:  I  do  not  intend  to 
magnify  the  Academy  and  its  stairway.  The 
Academy  did  very  well  in  its  day,  and  it  hap 
pened  to  be  within  easy  distance  of  James 
Prince's  residence.  If  its  big  green  doors  were 
flanked  on  one  side  by  a  grocery  and  on  the 
other  by  a  laundry,  and  if  its  stairway  was 
worn  untidily  by  other  feet  than  those  of  Dr. 
Grant's  boys,  I  shall  simply  point  out  that 
this  was  all  in  the  day  of  small  things  and  that 
Fastidiousness  was  still  upon  her  way.  Should 
this  not  satisfy  you,  I  will  state  that,  in  the 
year  following,  the  Academy  moved  into 
other  quarters:  it  lodged  itself  in  a  near-by 
private  residence  whose  owner,  in  real  estate, 
sensed  down-heeled  Decadence  stealing  that 
way  a  few  years  before  any  of  his  neighbors 
[  3  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

felt  it,  and  who  made  his  shifts  accordingly.  If 
even  this  does  not  satisfy  you,  I  might  sketch 
the  entrance  and  stairway,  somewhere  in 
Massachusetts,  which  are  to  know  the  foot 
falls  of  Lawrence  D.  McComas,  aged  ten, 
grandson  of  Johnny;  but  such  a  step  would 
perhaps  take  us  too  far  afield  as  well  as 
slightly  into  the  future.  One  does  not  pass  a 
lad  through  that  gateway  on  the  spur  of  the 
moment. 

Nor  ought  I  to  magnify,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  marble  stairway  of  the  Mid-Continent. 
This  was  not  one  of  the  town's  greater  banks; 
and  the  stairway  was  at  the  disposal  not  only 
of  the  bank's  clientele,  but  at  that  of  sixteen 
tiers  of  tenants.  However,  it  represented  some 
advanced  architect's  ideal  of  grandeur,  and  it 
served  to  make  the  bank's  president  seem 
haughty  when  in  truth  he  was  only  preoc 
cupied. 

As  you  may  now  surmise,  this  story,  even 
at  its  highest,  will  not  throw  millions  on  the 
habituated  and  indifferent  air;  nor,  at  its 
most  distended,  will  it  push  the  pride  of  life 
too  far.  That  has  been  done  already  in  suf- 
[  4  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

ficing  measure  by  many  others.  Let  us  ride 
here  an  even  keel  and  keep  well  within  rule 
and  reason. 

I  am  simply  to  tell  you  how,  as  the  years 
moved  on,  John  McComas  climbed  the  stairs 
of  life  from  the  bottom  to  the  top  —  or  so, 
at  least,  he  was  commonly  considered  to  have 
done;  and  how,  through  the  same  years,  Ray 
mond  Prince  passed  slowly  and  reluctantly 
along  the  same  stairs  from  top  to  bottom  — 
or  so  his  critics  usually  regarded  his  course. 
Nor  without  some  color  of  justice.  I  presume 
that  they  will  pass  each  other  somewhere  near 
the  middle  of  my  volume. 

ni 

In  1873  James  Prince  was  living  in  a  small, 
choice  residential  district  near  the  Lake. 
Its  choiceness  was  great,  but  was  not  duly 
guarded.  The  very  smallness  of  the  neigh 
borhood  —  a  triumphant  record  of  early  for 
tunes  —  put  it  upon  a  precarious  basis :  there 
was  all  too  slight  a  margin  against  encroach 
ments.  And,  besides,  the  discovery  came  to 
be  made,  some  years  later,  that  it  was  upon 

[    5    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

the  wrong  side  of  the  river  altogether.  But  it 
held  up  well  in  1873;  and  it  continued  to  do 
so  through  the  eighties.  Perhaps  it  was  not 
until  the  middle  or  later  nineties  that  the  real 
exodus  began.  Some  of  the  early  magnates 
had  died;  some  had  evaporated  financially; 
others  had  come  to  perceive,  either  for  them 
selves  or  through  their  children,  that  the  road 
to  social  consideration  now  ran  another  way. 
In  due  course  a  congeries  of  bulky  and  gran 
diose  edifices,  built  lavishly  in  the  best  taste 
of  their  own  day,  remained  to  stare  vacantly 
at  the  infrequent  passer-by,  or  to  tremble 
before  the  imminent  prospect  of  sinking  to 
unworthy  uses:  odd,  old-time  megatheriums 
stranded  ineptly  in  their  mortgage-mud.  But 
through  the  seventies  the  neighborhood  held 
up  its  head  and  people  came  from  far  to 
see  it. 

James  Prince  lived  in  one  of  these  houses; 
and,  around  the  corner,  old  Jehiel  Prince 
lingered  on  in  another. 

James  was,  of  course,  Raymond's  father. 
Jehiel  was  his  grandfather.  Raymond,  when 
we  take  him  up,  was  at  the  age  of  thirteen. 
[  6  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

And  Johnny  McComas,  if  you  care  tp  know, 
was  close  on  twelve. 

Jehiel  Prince  was  of  remote  New  England 
origin,  and  had  come  West  by  way  of  York 
State.  He  had  been  born  somewhere  between 
Utica  and  Rochester.  He  put  up  his  house 
on  no  basis  of  domestic  sociability;  it  was 
designed  as  a  sort  of  monument  to  his  per 
sonal  success.  He  had  not  left  the  East  to  be 
a  failure,  or  to  remain  inconspicuous.  His 
contractor  —  or  his  architect,  if  one  had  been 
employed  —  had  imagined  a  heavy,  square 
affair  of  dull-red  brick,  with  brown-stone  trim 
mings  in  heavy  courses.  Items:  a  high  base 
ment,  an  undecorated  mansard  in  slate;  a  big, 
clumsy  pair  of  doors,  set  in  the  middle  of  all, 
at  the  top  of  a  heavily  balustraded  flight  of 
brown-stone  steps;  one  vast  window  on  the 
right  of  the  doors  to  light  the  "parlor,"  and 
another  like  it,  on  the  left,  to  light  the  "li 
brary  " :  a  f agade  reared  before  any  allegiance 
to  "periods,"  and  in  a  style  best  denominated 
local  or  indigenous.  Jehiel  was  called  a  capi 
talist  and  had  a  supplementary  office  in  the 
high  front  basement;  and  here  he  was  fretting 

I    7    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

by  himself,  off  and  on,  in  1873;  and  here  he 
continued  to  fret  by  himself,  off  and  on,  until 
1880,  when  he  fretted  himself  from  earth. 
He  was  an  unhappy  man,  with  no  essential 
mastery  of  life.  His  wife  existed  somewhere 
upstairs.  They  seldom  spoke  —  indeed  seldom 
met  —  unless  papers  to  shift  the  units  of  a 
perplexed  estate  were  up  for  consideration. 
Sometimes  her  relatives  stole  into  the  house 
to  see  her  and  hoped,  with  fearfulness,  not 
to  meet  her  husband  in  some  passageway. 
He  himself  had  plenty  of  relatives,  by  blood 
as  well  as  by  marriage;  too  many  of  these  were 
rascals,  and  they  kept  him  busy.  The  town, 
in  the  seventies,  was  at  the  adventurous, 
formative  stage;  almost  everybody  was  leav 
ing  the  gravel  walks  of  Probity  to  take  a  short 
cut  across  the  fair  lawns  of  Success,  and  the 
social  landscape  was  a  good  deal  cut  up  and 
disfigured. 

"Poor  relations!" — such  was  Jehiel's  brief, 
scornful  rating  of  the  less  capable  among 
these  supernumeraries.  A  poor  relation  rep 
resented,  to  him,  the  lowest  form  of  animal 
life. 

[    8    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

And  when  the  chicane  and  intrigue  of  the 
more  clever  among  them  roused  his  indigna 
tion  he  would  exclaim:  "They're  putting  me 
through  the  smut-machine!"  —  an  ignomin 
ious,  exasperating  treatment  which  he  refused 
to  undergo  without  loud  protests.  These  pro 
tests  often  reduced  his  wife  to  trembling  and 
to  tears.  At  such  times  she  might  hide  an 
elder  sister  —  one  on  the  pursuit  of  some  slight 
dole  —  in  a  small  back  bedroom,  far  from 
sight  and  hearing. 

An  ugly  house,  inhabited  by  unhappy  peo 
ple.  Perhaps  I  should  brighten  things  by 
bringing  forward,  just  here,  Elsie,  Jehiel's 
beautiful  granddaughter.  But  he  had  no 
granddaughter.  We  must  let  Elsie  pass. 

Yet  a  fresh  young  shoot  budding  from  a 
gnarled  old  trunk  would  afford  a  piquant 
contrast  —  has  done  so  hundreds  of  times. 
Jehiel  Prince  undoubtedly  was  gnarled  and 
old  and  tough;  a  charming  granddaughter  to 
cajole  or  wheedle  him  in  the  library,  or  to 
relax  his  indignant  tension  over  young  men 
during  their  summer  attendance  on  swing  or 
hammock,  would  have  her  uses.  Yet  a  swing 

[    9    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

or  a  hammock  would  suggest,  rather  than  the 
bleak  stateliness  of  JehiePs  urban  environ 
ment,  some  fair,  remote  domain  with  lawns 
and  gardens;  and  Jehiel  was  far  from  possess 
ing  —  or  from  wanting  to  possess  —  a  coun 
try-house.  Elsie  may  be  revived,  if  necessary; 
but  I  can  promise  nothing.  I  rather  think  you 
have  heard  the  last  of  her. 

James  lived  a  few  hundred  yards  from  his 
father;  his  house  bulked  to  much  the  same 
effect.  It  was  another  symmetrical,  indige 
nous  box — in  stone,  however,  and  not  in  brick. 
It  had  its  mortgage.  If  this  mortgage  was 
ever  paid  up,  another  came  later  —  a  mort 
gage  which  passed  through  various  renewals 
and  which,  as  values  were  falling,  was  always 
renewed  for  a  lesser  amount  and  was  always 
demanding  ready  money  to  meet  the  differ 
ence.  In  later  years  Raymond,  with  this  for 
midable  weight  still  pressing  upon  him,  re 
ceived  finally  an  offer  of  relief  and  liberation; 
some  prosperous  upstart,  with  plans  of  his 
own,  said  he  would  chance  the  property, 
mortgage  and  all,  if  paid  a  substantial  bonus 
for  doing  so. 

[    10    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

The  premises  included  a  stable.  I  mention 
the  stable  on  account  of  Johnny  McComas. 
He  lived  in  it.  Downstairs,  the  landau  and 
the  two  horses,  and  another  horse,  and  a 
buggy  and  phaeton,  and  sometimes  a  cow; 
upstairs,  Johnny  and  his  father  and  mother. 
Johnny  could  look  out  through  a  crumpled 
dimity  curtain  across  the  back  yard  and  could 
see  his  father  freezing  ice-cream  on  a  Sunday 
forenoon  on  the  back  kitchen  porch;  and  he 
could  also  look  into  one  of  Raymond's  win 
dows  on  the  floor  above. 

Every  so  often  he  would  beg :  — 
"Oh,  father,  let  me  do  it,  —  please!" 
Then  he  would  lose  the  double  prospect  and 
get,  instead,  a  plate  of  vanilla  with  a  tin  spoon 
in  it. 

Raymond,  who  had  no  mastering  passion 
for  games,  sat  a  good  deal  in  his  room,  some 
times  at  one  of  the  side  windows;  occasionally 
at  the  back  one,  in  which  case  Johnny  was 
quite  welcome  to  look.  Raymond  had  more 
desks  than  one,  and  books  everywhere  on 
the  walls  between  them.  He  had  a  strong 
bent  toward  study,  and  was  even  beginning 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

to  dip  into  literary  composition.  He  studied 
when  he  might  better  have  been  at  play,  and 
he  kept  up  his  diary  under  a  student  lamp 
into  all  hours  of  the  night.  He  had  been  read 
ing  lately  about  Paris,  and  he  was  piecing  out 
the  elementary  instruction  of  the  Academy 
by  getting  together  a  collection  of  French 
grammars  and  dictionaries.  He  had  about 
decided  that  sometime  he  would  go  to  live 
on  that  island  in  the  Seine  near  Notre  Dame. 

His  father  told  him  he  was  working  too 
hard  and  too  late  —  that  it  would  hurt  his 
health  and  probably  injure  his  eyes.  His 
mother  made  no  comment  and  gave  no  ad 
vice.  She  was  an  invalid  and  thus  had  ab 
sorbing  interests  of  her  own.  Raymond  kept 
on  reading  and  writing. 

Perhaps  I  should  begin  to  sketch,  just  about 
here,  his  awakening  regard  for  some  Gertrude 
or  Adele,  and  his  young  rivalry  with  Johnny 
McComas  for  her  favor;  telling  how  Johnny 
won  over  Raymond  the  privilege  of  carrying 
her  books  to  school,  and  how,  in  the  end,  he 
won  Gertrude  or  Adele  herself  from  Raymond, 
and  married  her.  Fiddlesticks!  Please  put 

I    12    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

all  such  conventional  procedures  out  of  your 
head,  and  take  what  I  am  prepared  to  give 
you.  The  school  was  a  boys'  school.  There 
was  no  Gertrude  or  Adele  —  as  yet  —  any 
more  than  there  was  an  Elsie.  Raymond 
kept  to  his  books  and  indulged  in  no  juvenile 
philanderings.  Forget  all  such  foolish  stereo- 
typings  of  fancy. 

As  for  the  romance  and  the  rivalry:  when 
that  came,  it  came  with  a  vast  difference. 

IV 

Jehiel  Prince  was  a  capitalist.  So  was 
James:  a  capitalist,  and  the  son  of  a  capital 
ist.  They  had  some  interests  in  common,  and 
others  apart.  There  was  a  bank,  and  there 
were  several  large  downtown  business-blocks 
whose  tenants  required  a  lot  of  bookkeeping, 
and  there  was  a  horse-car  line.  There  was  a 
bus-line,  too,  between  the  railroad  depots  and 
the  hotels.  James  destined  Raymond  for  the 
bank.  He  would  hardly  go  to  college,  but  at 
seventeen  or  so  would  begin  on  the  collec 
tion-register  or  some  such  matter;  later  he 
might  come  to  be  a  receiving-teller;  pretty 
[  13  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

soon  lie  might  rise  to  an  apprehension  of  bank 
ing  as  a  science  and  have  a  line  as  an  official 
in  the  Bankers9  Gazette.  Beyond  that  he  might 
go  as  far  as  he  was  able.  James  thought  that, 
thus  favored  in  early  years,  the  boy  might 
go  far. 

But  Raymond  had  just  taken  on  Rome, 
and  was  finding  it  even  more  interesting  than 
Paris.  The  Academy's  professor  of  ancient 
history  began  to  regard  him  as  a  prodigy. 
Then,  somehow  or  other,  Raymond  got  hold  of 
Gregorovius,  with  his  "City  of  Rome  in  the 
Middle  Ages" — though  his  teacher  did  not 
know  of  this,  and  would  have  been  sure  to 
consider  it  an  undesirable  deviation  from  the 
straight  and  necessary  path;  and  thence 
forth  the  dozens  of  ordinary  boys  about  him 
counted,  I  feel  sure,  for  less  than  ever. 

Do  you  know  what  I'm  going  to  do?  I'm 
going  to  put  myself  into  the  story  as  one  of 
the  characters.  Then  the  many  Fs  will  no 
longer  refer  to  the  author  named  on  the  title- 
page,  but  will  represent  the  direct  participa 
tion  —  direct,  even  though  inconspicuous  — • 
of  a  person  whose  name,  status,  and  general 
[  14  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

nature  will  be  made  manifest,  incidentally 
and  gradually,  as  we  proceed.  You  object 
that  though  one's  status  and  general  nature 
may  be  revealed  "gradually,"  such  can 
scarcely  be  the  case  as  regards  one's  name? 
But  if  I  tell  you  that  my  Christian  name  is, 
let  us  say,  Oliver,  and  then  intimate  in  some 
succeeding  section  that  my  surname  is 
Ormsby,  and  then  do  not  disclose  my  middle 
initial  —  which  may  be  W  —  until  the  mid 
dle  of  the  book  (in  some  documentary  connec 
tion,  perhaps),  shall  I  not  be  doing  the  thing 
"gradually"? 

Oliver  W.  Ormsby.  H'm!  I'm  not  so  sure 
that  I  like  it.  Well,  my  name  may  turn  out, 
after  all,  to  be  something  quite  different.  And 
possibly  I  may  be  found  to  be  without  any 
middle  initial  whatever. 

But  to  return  to  the  method  itself.  You 
will  find  it  pursued  in  many  good  novels  and 
in  many  bad  ones;  with  admirable  discretion 
—  to  make  an  instance  —  in  "The  Way  of  All 
Flesh";  and  the  procedure  may  be  humbly 
copied  here.  It  will  involve,  of  course,  a 
rather  close  attendance  on  both  Raymond 
[  15  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

and  Johnny  through  a  long  term  of  years;  but 
perhaps  the  difficulties  involved  —  or,  rather, 
the  awkwardnesses  —  can  be  got  round  in  one 
way  or  another. 

At  the  Academy  we  like  Raymond  well 
enough,  on  the  whole  — 

You  see  at  once  how  the  method  applies: 
I  make  myself  an  attendant  there,  and  I  place 
my  age  midway  between  the  ages  of  the  other 
two. 

As  I  say,  we  liked  Raymond  well  enough, 
yet  did  not  quite  feel  that  he  coalesced. 
"Coalesced"  was  hardly  the  word  we  used  — 
such  verbal  grandeurs  were  reserved  for  our 
"compositions";  but  you  know  what  I  mean. 
Another  point  to  be  made  clear  without  delay 
is  this:  that  when  Johnny  appeared  at  the 
Academy,  he  had  lately  left  behind  him  the 
previous  condition  of  servitude  involved  in  a 
lodgment  above  the  landau,  the  phaeton,  and 
sometimes  the  cow.  His  father  and  mother, 
as  I  saw  them  and  remember  them,  appeared 
to  be  rather  nice  people.  Perhaps  they  had 
lately  come  from  some  small  country  town 
and  had  not  been  able,  at  first,  to  realize 
[  16  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

themselves  and  their  abilities  to  the  best  ad 
vantage  in  the  city.  Assuredly  his  father  knew 
how  to  drive  horses  and  to  care  for  them ;  and 
he  had  an  intuitive  knack  for  safeguarding 
his  self-respect.  And  Johnny's  mother  was 
perfectly  competent  to  cook  and  to  keep 
house  —  even  above  a  stable  —  most  neatly. 
If  Johnny's  curtain  was  rumpled,  that  was 
Johnny's  own  incorrigible  fault.  The  window- 
sill  was  a  wide  one,  and  Johnny,  I  found,  used 
it  as  a  catch-all.  He  kept  there  a  few  boxes  of 
"bugs,"  as  we  called  his  pinned-down  speci 
mens,  and  an  album  of  postage-stamps  that 
was  always  in  a  state  of  metamorphosis.  He 
had  some  loose  stamps  too,  and  sometimes, 
late  in  the  afternoon  or  on  Saturdays,  we 
"traded."  Johnny's  mother  was  likely  to 
caution  us  about  her  freshly  scrubbed  floors, 
and  sometimes  gave  me  a  cooky  on  my  leav 
ing.  I  never  heard  of  Raymond's  having  been 
there. 

But  presently  the  trading  stopped,  and  the 

"bugs,"  however  firmly  pinned  down,  took 

their   flight.     Johnny's   father   and   mother 

"moved"  —  that  was  the  brief,  unadorned, 

[    17    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

sufficing  formula.  It  was  all  accepted  as  in 
evitable;  hardly  for  a  boy  a  little  past  twelve, 
like  myself,  to  question  the  movements  of 
Olympian  elders;  nor  even,  in  fact,  to  feel  an 
abiding  interest  in  them  when  I  had  seen 
them  but  three  or  four  times  in  all.  I  never 
speculated  —  never  asked  where  they  had 
come  from;  never  considered  the  nature  of 
their  tenure  (not  wondering  how  much 
Johnny's  father  may  have  been  paid  for  driv 
ing  the  two  bays  and  washing  the  parlor  and 
bedroom  windows  and  milking  the  cow,  when 
there  was  one,  and  not  figuring  the  reduction 
in  wages  due  to  the  renting  value  of  the  three 
or  four  small  rooms  they  occupied);  nor  did 
I  much  concern  myself  as  to  whither  they 
might  have  gone.  Probably  opportunity  had 
opened  up  a  more  promising  path.  However, 
the  path  did  not  lead  far;  for  Johnny,  a  month 
or  two  later,  made  his  first  appearance  at  the 
Academy,  on  the  opening  of  the  fall  term. 
During  the  preceding  year  he  had  been  going 
to  a  public  school  "across  the  tracks"  and  had 
played  with  a  boisterous  crowd  in  a  big  cin 
dered  yard. 

[    18    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

Therefore,  when  Raymond,  surrounded  by 
half  a  dozen  other  boys,  took  occasion,  on  the 
stairs,  to  say :  — 

"How  are  you,  Johnny?"  — 

And  Johnny,  with  his  back  to  the  wall  of 
the  landing,  replied :  — 

" I'm  pretty  well," — 

Johnny  may  have  meant  that,  despite  the 
novelty  and  the  strangeness  of  his  situation, 
he  was  very  well,  indeed;  feeling,  doubtless, 
that  he  was  finally  where  he  had  a  right  to  be 
and  that  his  alert  face  was  turned  the  proper 
way. 

The  boys  about  Raymond  were  asking  him 
to  take  part  in  a  football  game.  It  was  not 
that  Raymond  was  especially  popular;  but 
he  could  run.  In  that  simple  day  football  was 
football  —  principally  a  matter  of  running  and 
of  straightforward  kicking;  and  Raymond 
could  do  both  better  than  any  other  boy  in  the 
school.  He  could  also  outjump  any  of  us  — 
when  he  would  take  the  trouble  to  try.  In 
fact,  his  physical  faculties  were  in  his  legs; 
his  arms  were  nowhere.  He  was  never  able  to 
throw  either  far  or  straight.  Some  of  his  early 

I     19    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

attempts  at  throwing  were  met  with  shouts  of 
ridicule,  and  he  never  tried  the  thing  further. 
If  he  fell  upon  the  ill  luck  of  finding  a  ball  in 
his  hands,  he  would  toss  it  to  somebody  else 
with  an  air  of  facetious  negligence.  To  stand, 
as  Johnny  McComas  could  stand,  and  throw 
a  ball  straight  up  for  seventy-five  feet  and 
then  catch  it  without  stirring  a  foot  from  the 
spot  where  he  was  planted,  would  have  been 
an  utter  impossibility  for  him.  In  fact,  Ray 
mond  simply  cultivated  his  obviously  natural 
gifts;  he  never  exerted  himself  systematically 
to  make  good  any  of  his  deficiencies.  He  was 
so  as  a  boy;  and  he  remained  so  always. 

In  those  early  days  we  had  no  special  play 
grounds.  We  commonly  used  the  streets. 
There  was  li,ttle  traffic.  Pedestrians  took 
their  chances  on  the  sidewalks  with  leapfrog 
and  the  like,  and  we  took  ours,  in  turn,  in 
the  wide  roadway  with  "pom-pom-peel- 
away"  and  similar  games.  Football,  how 
ever,  would  take  us  to  a  vacant  corner  lot, 
some  two  streets  away.  Some  absentee  owner 
in  the  East  was  doubtless  paying  taxes  on 
it  with  hopes  of  finally  recouping  himself 
[  20  J 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

through  the  unearned  increment.  Mean 
while  it  ran  somewhat  to  rubbish  and  tin  cans, 
to  bare  spots  from  which  adjoining  home- 
makers  had  removed  irregular  squares  of 
turf,  and  to  holes  in  the  dry,  brown  earth 
where  potatoes  had  been  baked  with  a  mini 
mum  of  success  and  a  maximum  of  wood 
ashes  and  acrid  smoke.  It  was  on  the  way  to 
this  frequented  tract  that  Raymond  care 
lessly  let  fall  a  word  about  Johnny  McComas. 
Perhaps  he  need  not  have  said  that  Johnny 
had  lately  been  living  above  his  father's 
stable  —  but  he  spoke  without  special  ani 
mus.  A  few  of  the  boys  thought  Johnny's 
intrusion  odd,  even  cheeky;  but  most  of  them, 
employing  the  social  assimilability  of  youth, 
• — especially  that  of  youth  in  the  Middle  West, 
— laid  little  stress  upon  it.  Johnny  made 
his  place,  in  due  time  and  on  his  own  merits. ' 
Or  shall  I  say,  rather,  by  his  own  powers? 

V 

You  are  not  to  suppose  that  while  I  was 
free  to  visit  Johnny  in  the  stable,  I  was  not 
free  to  visit  Raymond  in  the  house.  Though 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

my  people  lived  rather  modestly  on  a  side 
street,  the  interior  of  the  Prince  residence 
was  not  unknown  to  me.  On  one  occasion 
Jlaymond  took  me  up  to  his  room  so  that  I 
might  hear  some  of  his  writings.  He  had  been 
to  Milwaukee  or  to  Indianapolis,  and  had 
found  himself  moved  to  set  down  an  account 
of  his  three  days  away  from  home.  He  led 
me  through  several  big  rooms  downstairs 
before  we  got  to  his  own  particular  quarters 
above.  The  furnishing  of  these  rooms  im 
pressed  me  at  the  time;  but  I  know,  now, 
that  they  were  heavy  and  clumsy  when  they 
were  meant  to  be  rich  and  massive,  and  were 
meretricious  when  they  were  meant  to  be 
elegant.  It  was  all  of  the  Second  Empire, 
qualified  by  an  erratic,  exaggerated  touch 
that  was  natively  American.  I  am  afraid  I 
found  it  rather  superb  and  was  made  uncom 
fortable  —  was  even  intimidated  by  it;  all 
the  more  so  that  Raymond  took  it  completely 
for  granted.  One  room  contained  a  big  or 
chestrion  with  many  pipes  in  tiers,  like  an 
organ's.  On  one  occasion  I  heard  it  play  the 
overture  to  "William  Tell,"  and  it  managed 


ON  THE  STAIBS 

the  "Storm"  very  handily.  There  was  a  large, 
three-cornered  piano  in  the  same  room  — 
one  of  the  sort  I  never  could  feel  at  home 
with;  and  this  instrument,  more  than  the 
other,  I  suppose,  gave  Raymond  his  futile  and 
disadvantageous  start  toward  music.  Travel; 
art;  anything  but  the  bank. 

I  have  no  idea  at  what  time  of  day  he  in 
troduced  me  into  the  house,  but  it  was  an 
hour  at  which  the  men,  as  well  as  the  women, 
were  at  home.  In  one  part  or  another  of  the 
hall  I  met  his  mother.  She  was  dark  and  lean; 
without  being  tall,  she  looked  gaunt.  She 
seemed  occupied  with  herself,  as  she  moved 
out  of  one  shadow  into  another,  and  she  gave 
scant  attention  to  a  casual  boy.  Raymond 
was  really  no  more  hospitable  than  any  young 
and  growing  organism  must  be;  but  perhaps 
she  was  thankful  that  it  was  only  one  boy, 
instead  of  three  or  four. 

In  another  room,  somewhere  on  the  first 
floor,  I  had  a  glimpse  of  his  father.  I  remem 
ber  him  as  a  sedate  man  who  did  not  insist. 
If  he  set  a  boy  right,  it  was  done  but  ver 
bally;  the  boy  was  left  to  see  the  justness  of 
t  &  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

the  point  and  to  act  on  it  for  himself.  I 
gathered,  later,  that  James  Prince  had  done 
little,  unaided,  for  himself;  whatever  he  had 
accomplished  had  been  in  conjunction  with 
other  men  —  with  his  father,  particularly; 
and  when  his  father  died,  a  few  years  later, 
he  was  the  chief  heir  —  and  he  never  added 
much  to  what  he  had  received.  To  him  fell 
the  property  —  and  its  worries.  The  worries, 
I  surmise,  were  the  greater  part  of  it  all. 
Everything  has  to  be  paid  for,  and  James 
Prince's  easily  gained  success  was  paid  for, 
through  the  ensuing  years,  with  consider 
able  anxieties  and  perturbations. 

It  was  his  father,  I  presume,  who  was  with 
him  as  I  passed  the  library  door:  a  bent,  gray 
man,  with  a  square  head  and  a  yellow  face. 
A  third  man  was  between  them;  a  tall,  dry, 
cold  fellow  with  iron-gray  beard  and  no  mus 
tache  —  a  face  in  the  old  New  England  tradi 
tion.  This  man  was,  of  course,  their  lawyer, 
and  I  judge  that  he  gave  them  little  comfort. 
I  felt  him  as  chill  and  slow,  as  enjoying  the 
tying  and  untying  of  legalities  with  a  stiff, 
clammy  hand,  and  as  unlikely  to  be  hurried 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

on  account  of  any  temperament  possessed  by 
himself  or  manifested  by  his  clients.  Fire,  in 
a  wide  sweep,  had  overtaken  the  town  a  year 
or  two  before  —  a  community  owned  by  the 
Eastern  seaboard  and  mortgaged  to  its  eye 
brows;  and  the  Princes,  as  I  learned  years 
later,  had  been  building  extensively  on  bor 
rowed  capital  just  before  the  fire-doom  came. 
Probably  too  great  a  part  of  the  funds  em 
ployed  came  from  their  own  bank. 

Raymond,  once  the  second  floor  was 
reached,  showed  me  his  desks  and  bookcases; 
also  a  new  sort  of  pen  which  he  had  thought 
to  be  able  to  use,  but  which  he  had  cast  aside. 
And  he  offered  to  read  me  his  account  of 
the  three  days  in  Milwaukee,  or  wherever. 

"If  you  would  like  to  hear  .  .  .  ?"  he  said, 
with  a  sort  of  bashful  determination. 

"Just  as  you  please,"  I  replied,  patient 
then,  as  ever  after,  in  the  face  of  the  arts. 

Nothing  much  seemed  to  have  happened 
—  nothing  that  I,  at  least,  should  have  taken 
the  trouble  to  set  down;  but  a  good  part  of 
his  fifteen  pages,  as  he  read  them,  seemed  in 
teresting  and  even  important.  I  suppose  this 
t  25  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

came  from  the  way  he  did  it.  As  early  as 
thirteen  he  had  the  knack;  then,  and  always 
after,  he  enjoyed  writing  for  its  own  sake.  I 
feel  sure  that  his  father  did  not  quite  approve 
this  taste.  His  grandfather,  who  had  had  a 
lesser  education  and  felt  an  exaggerated  re 
spect  for  learning,  may  have  had  more  pa 
tience.  He  talked  for  years  about  endowing 
some  college,  but  never  did  it;  when  the  time 
finally  came,  he  was  far  too  deep  in  his  finan 
cial  worries. 

James  Prince,  as  I  have  noted,  occasionally 
mentioned  to  Raymond  his  conviction  that 
he  was  wasting  his  time  with  all  this  scrib 
bling,  and  that  so  much  work  by  artificial 
light  was  imperiling  his  eyesight. 

"What  good  is  it  all  going  to  do  you? "I 
once  heard  him  ask.  His  tone  was  resigned, 
as  if  he  had  put  the  question  several  times 
before.  "I  don't  think  I'd  write  quite  so 
much,  if  I  were  you." 

Raymond  looked  at  him  in  silence.  "Not 
write?"  he  seemed  to  say.  "You  might  as 
well  ask  me  not  to  breathe." 

"At  least  do  it  by  daylight,"  his  father 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

suggested,  or  counseled,  —  scarcely  urged. 
"You  won't  have  any  eyes  at  all  by  the  time 
you're  thirty." 

But  Raymond  liked  his  double  student- 
lamp  with  green  shades.  He  liked  the  quiet 
and  retirement  of  late  hours.  I  believe  he 
liked  even  the  smell  and  smear  of  the  oil. 

His  father  spoke,  as  I  have  reported;  but 
he  never  took  away  the  pen  or  put  the  light 
out.  The  boy  seemingly  had  too  strong  a 
"slant":  a  misfortune  —  or,  at  least,  a  dis 
advantage  — .which  a  concerned  parent  must 
somehow  endure.  But  he  did  take  a  more 
decided  tack  later  on :  he  never  said  a  word 
about  Raymond's  going  to  college,  and  Ray 
mond,  as  a  fact,  never  went.  He  fed  his  own 
intellectual  furnace,  and  fed  it  in  his  own 
way.  He  learned  an  immense  number  of  use 
less  and  unrelated  things.  In  time  they  came 
to  cumber  him.  Perhaps  college  would  have 
been  better,  after  all. 

I  never  knew  Raymond  to  show  any  affec 
tion  for  either  of  his  parents;  and  he  had 
no  brothers  and  sisters.  His  father  was  an 
essentially  kind,  just  man,  and  might  have 
[  27  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

welcomed  an  occasional  little  manifestation  of 
feeling.  One  day  he  told  Raymond  he  had 
no  heart.  That  was  as  far  as  emotion  and 
the  expression  of  emotion  could  carry  him. 
Raymond's  mother  might  have  been  kindly 
too,  if  she  had  not  had  herself.  But  a  new 
doctor,  a  new  remedy,  a  new  draught  from 
a  new  quarter  —  and  her  boy  was  instantly 
nowhere.  Raymond's  own  position  seemed 
to  be  that  life  in  families  was  the  ordained 
thing  and  was  to  be  accepted.  Well,  this  was 
the  family  ordained  for  him,  and  he  would 
put  up  with  it  as  best  he  might.  But  I  kept 
on  developing  my  own  impression  of  him;  and 
I  see  now  just  what  that  impression  was  go 
ing  to  be.  Raymond,  almost  from  the  start, 
felt  himself  as  an  independent,  detached, 
isolated  individual,  and  he  must  have  his 
little  zone  of  quiet  round  him.  Why  in  the 
world  he  should  ever  have  married  .  .  .! 

I  never  knew  him  to  show  gratitude  for 
anything  given  him  by  his  parents.  On  the 
other  hand,  I  never  heard  him  ask  them  for 
anything.  He  possessed  none  of  the  little 
ingenuities  by  which  boys  sometimes  secure 
[  28  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

a  bit  of  pocket-money.  If  he  wanted  any 
thing,  he  went  without  it  until  it  was  offered. 
Frankly,  he  seldom  had  to  wait  long. 

Not  that  what  came  was  always  the  right 
thing.  He  showed  me  his  fountain-pen  — 
one  of  the  early  half -failures  —  with  some 
disdain.  He  always  carried  a  number  of 
things  in  his  pocket,  but  never  the  pen.  I 
myself  tried  it  one  day,  and  it  went  well 
enough;  I  should  have  been  glad  to  have  it 
for  my  own.  But  steel  pens  sufficed  him; 
save  once,  when  I  saw  him,  in  a  high 
mood,  experimenting  fantastically  with  a  quill 
one. 

He  cared  no  more  about  his  clothes  than 
any  of  the  rest  of  us.  He  never  laid  any  real 
stress  on  them  at  any  time  of  life.  He  devel 
oped  early  a  notion  of  the  sufficiency  of  in 
terior  furnishings;  mere  external  upholstery 
never  quite  secured  his  interest.  I  heard  his 
father  once  or  twice  complain  of  his  looking 
careless  and  shabby.  He  waited  with  equa 
nimity  until  his  father  could  take  him  to 
the  clothier's.  He  asked  but  one  thing;  that 
there  should  be  no  indulgence  in  sartorial 
[  29  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

novelties  at  his  expense.  And  I  never  met  a 
sedater  taste  in  neckties. 

Three  or  four  were  hanging  over  the  gas- 
jet,  close  to  the  window;  they  were  all  dark 
blues  or  grays,  and  most  of  them  frayed.  He 
expected  a  new  one  about  Christmas;  no 
hurry. 

From  that  window,  across  the  back  yard, 
we  saw  Johnny  McComas,  in  a  bright  new 
red  tie,  busy  at  his  own  window.  I  waved  my 
hand,  and  he  waved  back.  Raymond  looked 
at  him,  but  made  no  special  sign.  Johnny 
was  packing  up  his  specimens  and  his  post 
age-stamps,  preparatory  to  the  family  heg- 
ira,  though  neither  of  us  knew. 

VI 

Raymond,  who  might  have  asked  for  al 
most  anything,  asked  for  nothing.  Johnny, 
who  was  in  position  to  ask  for  next  to  nothing, 
asked  for  almost  everything.  He  was  con 
stantly  teasing  his  parents,  so  far  as  my  ob 
servation  went;  and  his  teasing  was  a  form  of 
criticism.  "You  are  not  doing  the  right  thing 
by  me"  —  such  might  have  seemed  his  plaint. 
[  30  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

He  was  beginning  to  spread,  to  reach  out: 
acquisitiveness  and  assimilativeness  were  to 
be  his  two  watchwords.  He  hankered  after 
the  externalities;  he  wanted  "things."  If  it 
was  only  a  new  stamp-album,  he  wanted  it 
hard,  and  he  said  so.  I  shall  not  go  so  far  as 
to  say  that  he  hectored  his  parents  into  send 
ing  him  to  our  school.  They  were  probably 
feeling,  on  their  own  account,  that  they  had 
come  to  town  for  better  things  than  they  had 
been  getting;  and  likely  enough  they  met  his 
demands  halfway.  There  was  usually  a  cer 
tain  element  of  cheeriness  in  his  nagging;  but 
the  cheeriness  was  quite  secondary  to  the 
insistence. 

"Oh,  come,  mother!"  or,  "Oh,  father, 
now!"  was  commonly  Johnny's  opening  for 
mula,  employed  with  a  smile,  wheedling  or 
protesting,  as  the  occasion  seemed  to  require. 

And,  "Oh,  well  .  .  .!"  was  commonly  the 
opening  formula  for  the  response  —  mean 
ing,  in  completed  form,  "Well,  if  we  must, 
we  must." 

However,  his  parents  were  probably  ready 
to  meet  with  an  open  mind  the  scorings  of 
[  31  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

their  young,  sole  critic,  thinking  that  his 
urgency  might  advance  themselves  no  less 
than  him.  Well,  in  the  autumn  Johnny 
turned  up  at  the  Academy  with  an  equip 
ment  that  included  everything  approved  and 
needed;  and  he  was  not  long  in  letting  us 
know  that  his  father  was  manager  in  the  sup 
ply-yard  of  a  large  firm  of  contractors  and 
builders.  His  father  had  spent  his  earlier  mar 
ried  years,  it  transpired,  about  the  grounds 
of  a  small-town  "depot,"  and  knew  a  good 
deal  in  regard  to  lumber  and  cement. 

To  most  of  us  fathers  were  fathers  and 
businesses  were  businesses  —  things  to  be 
accepted  without  comment  or  criticism.  Our 
own  youthfulness,  and  the  social  tone  of  the 
day  and  region,  discouraged  either.  If  I 
thought  anything  about  it,  I  must  have 
thought,  as  I  think  still,  that  it  was  a  manly 
and  satisfying  matter  to  come  to  grips  with 
the  serviceable  actualities  of  the  building 
trades.  Construction,  in  its  various  phases, 
still  seems  to  me  a  more  useful  and  more 
tonic  concern  than  brokerage,  for  example, 
and  similar  forms  of  office  life. 
I  32  J 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

Johnny  soon  suggested  that  I  go  with  him, 
some  Saturday  afternoon,  to  the  "yard."  I 
asked  Raymond  to  join  us.  Raymond  had 
just  come  on  Gothic  architecture  and  was 
studying  its  historical  phases.  He  was  pick 
ing  up  points  about  the  English  cathedrals 
and  was  making  drawings  to  illustrate  the 
development  of  buttresses  and  of  window 
tracery.  The  yard  was  only  a  mile  and  a 
half  away  and  the  three  of  us  frolicked  loosely 
along  the  streets  until  we  got  there.  John 
ny's  father  was  going  about  the  place  in  an 
admirable  pair  of  new  blue  overalls,  and 
carried  a  thick,  blunt  pencil  behind  one 
ear.  He  showed  an  independent,  breezy 
manner  that  had  not  been  very  marked 
before.  He  was  loud  and  clear  and  authori 
tative,  and  kept  a  dozen  or  more  stout  fel 
lows  pretty  busy.  Once  an  elderly  man  in  a 
high  silk  hat  passed  through  the  yard  on  his 
way  to  its  little  office.  He  stopped,  and  he  and 
Johnny's  father  had  some  talk  together. 
"Yes,  sir!"  said  Johnny's  father,  with  con 
siderable  emphasis  and  momentum.  I  en 
joyed  his  "Yes,  sir!"  It  was  pleasant  to  find 
I  33  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

him  so  hearty  and  so  well-mannered.  He 
seemed  to  have  escaped  from  something  and 
to  be  glad  of  it.  The  man  in  the  high  hat 
hardly  tried  to  stand  up  against  him.  As  he 
turned  away  he  smiled  in  a  curious  fashion; 
and  I  thought  I  heard  him  say  to  himself,  as 
he  moved  back  toward  the  door  of  the  shed 
that  had  the  sign  "Office"  on  it:  "I  wonder 
whether  I'm  going  to  run  him,  or  whether 
he's  going  to  run  me?" 

Johnny  was  all  eyes  for  a  tall  stack  of  lath 
ing  in  bundles  and  for  a  pile  of  sacks  filled 
with  hair  from  cows'  hides,  which  last  was 
to  go  into  plaster.  Raymond  looked  at  these 
objects  of  interest  —  and  at  several  others 
—  with  some  degree  of  abstractedness.  The 
English  cathedrals,  as  I  was  told  later,  had  not 
been  plastered.  Raymond  had  already  de 
veloped  some  faculty  for  entertaining  a  con 
cept  freed  from  clogging  and  qualifying  detail; 
and  this  faculty  grew  as  he  grew.  He  liked  his 
ideal  net;  facts,  practical  facts,  never  had 
much  charm  for  him.  I  remember  his  once 
saying,  when  about  twenty-three,  that  he 
should  have  liked  to  be  an  architect,  but  that 
[  34  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

plumbing  and  speaking-tubes  had  turned  him 
away.  If  he  could  have  drawn  fagades  and 
stopped  there,  I  think  he  might  have  been 
quite  happy  and  successful  in  the  profession. 

Johnny  pulled  a  lath  for  each  of  us  out  of 
one  of  the  bundles,  and  we  used  them  in  our 
tour  of  the  yard  as  alpenstocks.  We  found  a 
glacier  in  the  shape  of  a  mortar  bed  and  were 
using  the  laths  to  sound  its  depths,  when 
Johnny's  father  appeared  from  round  the 
corner  of  a  lumber  pile.  He  clapped  his  hands 
with  a  loud  report. 

"Here!  that  won't  do!"  he  said;  and  none 
of  us  thought  it  remotely  possible  to  with 
stand  him.  "Enough  for  one  morning,"  he 
added,  and  he  waved  both  arms  with  a  broad 
scoop  to  motion  us  toward  the  street  gate. 

"Oh,  father,  now!"  began  Johnny  (with  no 
smile  at  all),  conscious  of  his  position  as 
host. 

"No  more,  to-day,"  said  his  father.  "School 
six  days  a  week  would  be  about  my  idea." 

Raymond  said  nothing,  but  drew  up  his 
mouth  to  one  side  and  himself  led  us  toward 
the  street. 

[    35    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

VII 

I  would  not  seem  to  stress  either  the  saliency 
or  the  significance  of  these  incidents.  I  simply 
put  them  down,  after  many  years,  just  as  they 
return  to  my  memory.  Memory  is  sporadic; 
memory  is  capricious;  memory  is  inconse 
quent,  sometimes  forgetting  the  large  thing 
to  record  the  little.  And  memory  may  again 
prove  itself  all  these,  and  more,  if  I  attempt  to 
rescue  from  the  past  a  children's  party, 

It  was  my  young  sister  who  "gave"  it,  as 
our  expression  was;  parents  in  the  background, 
providing  the  funds  and  engineering  the 
mechanism,  were  not  allowed  greatly  to  count. 
The  party  was  given  for  my  sister's  visitor,  a 
little  girl  from  some  small  interior  town  whose 
name  (whether  child's  or  town's)  I  have  long 
since  forgotten.  Raymond  was  invited,  of 
course;  —  "though  he  isn't  very  nice  to 
us,"  as  my  sister  ruefully  observed;  and  some 
prompting  toward  fair  pjay  (as  I  vaguely 
termed  it  to  myself)  made  me  suggest 
Johnny  McComas.  He  came. 

There  must  have  been  some  twenty-five 
I  36  J 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

of  us  —  all  that  our  small  house  would  hold. 
There  were  more  games  than  dances;  and  the 
games  were  largely  "kissing"  games:  "post- 
office,"  "clap-in,  clap-out,"  "drop  the  hand 
kerchief,"  and  such-like  innocent  infantilities. 
Some  of  us  thought  ourselves  too  old  for  this 
sort  of  thing,  and  would  willingly  have  left  it 
to  the  younger  children;  but  the  eager  lady 
from  next  door,  who  was  "helping,"  insisted 
that  we  all  take  part.  This  is  the  place  for  the 
Gertrudes  and  the  Adeles,  and  they  were  there 
in  good  measure,  be-bowed  and  be-sashed 
and  fluttering  about  (or  romping  about) 
flushed  and  happy.  And  this  would  be  pre 
eminently  the  place  for  Elsie,  Jehiel's  grand 
daughter  and  Raymond's  cousin.  Elsie  would 
naturally  be,  in  'the  general  scheme,  my  child 
hood  sweetheart;  later,  my  fiancee;  and  ulti 
mately  my  wife.  Such  a  relationship  would 
help  me,  of  course,  to  keep  tab  more  easily  on 
Raymond  during  the  long  course  of  his  life. 
For  instance,  at  this  very  party  I  see  her  doing 
a  polka  with  Johnny  McComas,  while  Ray 
mond  (who  had  been  sent  to  dancing-school, 
but  had  steadfastly  refused  to  "learn")  views 
[  37  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

Johnny  with  a  mixture  of  envy  and  contempt. 
A  year  or  two  later,  I  see  Elsie  seated  in  the  twi 
light  at  the  head  of  her  grandfather's  grandiose 
front  steps,  surrounded  by  boys  of  seventeen 
or  eighteen,  while  Raymond,  sent  on  some  er 
rand  to  his  grandfather's  house,  picks  his  way 
through  the  crowd  to  say  to  himself,  censori 
ously,  in  the  vestibule:  "Well,  if  I  can't  talk 
any  better  at  that  age  than  they  do  .  .  .!" 
Yes,  Elsie  would  undeniably  have  been  an  aid; 
but  she  never  existed,  and  we  must  dispense 
with  her  for  once  and  for  all. 

Raymond  could  always  make  himself  diffi 
cult,  and  he  usually  did  so  at  parties.  To  be 
difficult  was  to  be  choice,  and  to  be  choice  was 
to  be  desirable.  Therefore  he  got  more  of  the 
kisses  than  he  might  have  got  otherwise  — 
many  more,  in  fact,  than  he  cared  for.  But  on 
this  occasion  a  good  part  of  his  talent  for 
making  himself  difficult  was  reserved  until  re 
freshment  time.  Most  of  the  boys  and  girls 
had  paired  instinctively  to  make  a  prompt 
raid  on  the  dining-room  table,  with  Johnny 
McComas  unabashedly  to  the  fore;  but  Ray 
mond  lingered  behind.  My  mother  presently 
[  38  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

found  him  moping  alone  in  the  parlor,  where 
he  was  looking  with  an  over-emphatic  care 
at  the  pictures. 

"Why,  Raymond  dear!  Why  aren't  you 
out  with  the  others?  Don't  you  want  any 
thing  to  eat?" 

No;  Raymond  did  n't  want  anything. 

"But  you  do  —  of  course  you  do.   Come." 

Then  Raymond,  thus  urged  and  escorted, 
• —  and,  above  all,  individualized,  —  allowed 
himself  to  be  led  out  to  the  refreshments;  and, 
to  do  him  justice,  he  ate  as  much  and  as  hap 
pily  as  any  one  else.  Johnny  McComas,  with 
his  mouth  full,  and  with  Gertrudes  and  Adeles 
all  around  him,  welcomed  him  with  the  high 
sign  of  jovial  camaraderie. 

Yes,  Johnny  took  his  full  share  of  the  ice 
cream  and  macaroons;  he  got  his  full  quota 
of  letters  from  the  "post-office";  the  handker 
chief  was  dropped  behind  him  every  third  or 
fourth  time,  and  he  always  caught  the  atten 
tive  little  girl  who  was  whisking  away  —  if  he 
wanted  to.  He  even  took  a  manful  part  in  the 
dancing. 

"What  a  good  schottische!"  exclaimed  one 
t  39  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

of  the  Adeles,  as  the  industrious  lady  from  next 
door,  after  a  final  bang,  withdrew  her  hands 
from  the  keyboard.  "And  how  well  you 
dance!" 

"Gee!"  exclaimed  Johnny,  with  his  most 
open-faced  smile;  "is  that  what  you  call  it  — 
a  schottische?  I  never  tried  it  before  in  my 
life!" 

"Learn  by  doing" — such  might  have  been 
the  motto  of  the  town  in  those  early,  untu 
tored  days.  And  Johnny  McComas  emphat 
ically  made  this  motto  his  own. 


PART  II 
I 

RAYMOND  went  into  the  bank;  not  in  due 
course,  but  rather  more  than  a  year  later. 
After  seeing  some  of  his  more  advanced  school 
fellows  depart  for  Eastern  colleges,  after  in 
dulging  a  year  of  desultory  study  at  home,  and 
after  passing  a  summer  and  autumn  among 
the  Wisconsin  lakes,  he  was  formally  claimed 
by  Finance.  There  was  no  Franciscan  ardor 
to  clasp  her  close,  as  others  have  clasped 
Poverty  and  Obedience.  He  began  his  busi 
ness  career,  as  men  have  been  recommended 
to  begin  their  matrimonial  career,  with  a 
slight  aversion.  However,  his  aversion  never 
brought  him  any  future  good. 

His  year  at  home,  so  far  as  I  could  make 
out,  was  taken  up  largely  with  aesthetics  and 
music.  He  read  the  "Seven  Lamps  of  Archi 
tecture"  and  they  lighted  him  along  a  road 
that  led  far,  far  from  the  constructional  prac 
ticalities  of  the  yard  where  we  had  spent  a 
[  41  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

Saturday  forenoon,  some  five  years  before. 
He  had  begun  to  collect  books  on  the  brick 
work  of  Piacenza  and  Cremona,  and  these  too 
led  him  farther  along  the  general  path  of 
sestheticism.  During  our  years  at  the  Acad 
emy  the  town,  after  an  unprecedentedly  thor 
ough  sweep  by  fire,  had  been  rebuilding  it 
self;  and  on  more  than  one  Saturday  forenoon 
of  that  period  we  had  tramped  together 
through  the  devastated  district,  rejoicing  in 
the  restorative  activities  on  every  hand  and 
honestly  admiring  the  fantasies  and  ingenui 
ties  of  the  "architects"  of  the  day.  But  Ray 
mond  had  now  emerged  from  that  innocent 
stage;  summoning  forth  from  some  interior 
reservoir  of  taste  an  inspirational  code  of  his 
own,  he  condemned  these  crudities  and  aber 
rations  as  severely  as  they  probably  deserved, 
and  cultivated  a  confident  belief  that  somewhere 
or  other  he  was  to  find  things  which  should 
square  better  with  his  likings  and  should  re 
spond  more  kindly  to  his  mounting  sensibilities. 

"Not  going  to  cut  us?"  I  once  asked. 
"Just  as  we're  picking  up,  too?" 

But  Raymond  looked  abstractedly  into  the 
I  42  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

distance  and  undertook  no  definite  reply. 
Possibly  he  had  responded  to  Ruskin;  more 
probably  to  some  divine  young  sense  of  truth 
and  fitness  such  as  forms  the  natural  endow 
ment,  by  no  means  uncommon,  of  right- 
minded  youth.  Or  it  may  be  that  he  had 
simply  reached  the  "critical"  age,  when  Ideal 
ism  calls  the  Daily  Practicalities  to  its  bar 
and  delivers  its  harsh,  imperious  judgments; 
when  it  puts  the  world,  if  but  for  a  few  brief 
months,  "where  it  belongs."  His  natural 
tendency  toward  generalization  helped  him 
here  —  helped,  perhaps,  too  much.  He  passed 
judgment  not  only  on  his  parents,  whom  he 
had  been  finding  very  unsatisfactory,  and  on 
most  of  his  associates  (myself,  for  example, 
whenever  I  happened  to  speak  an  apprecia 
tive  word  for  his  essentially  admirable  father), 
but  on  the  community  as  such.  A  filmy  visit 
ant  from  Elsewhere  had  grazed  his  forehead 
and  whispered  in  his  ear  that  the  town  allotted 
to  him  by  destiny  was  crude,  alike  in  its 
deficiencies  and  in  its  affirmations,  and  that 
complete  satisfaction  for  him  lay  altogether 
in  another  and  riper  quarter. 
[  43  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

Perhaps  it  was  some  such  discontent  ag 
this  that  led  him  in  the  direction  of  musical 
composition  —  or  toward  attempts  at  it.  He 
had  no  adequate  preparation  for  it,  nor,  so 
far  as  I  could  perceive,  any  justificatory  call. 
He  had  once  taken  a  few  terms  on  the  piano; 
and  he  had  on  his  shelves  a  few  elementary 
works  on  harmony;  and  he  had  in  his  finger 
tips  a  certain  limited  knack  for  improvisa 
tion;  and  he  had  once  sketched  out,  rather 
haltingly,  a  few  simple  songs.  Yet,  all  the 
same,  another  reservoir,  one  of  uncertain 
depth  and  capacity,  was  opening  up  for  him 
at  an  age  when  opening-up  was  the  continu 
ing  and  dominating  feature  of  one's  days  — 
a  muse  was  stirring  the  vibrant  air  about 
him;  and  I  gathered,  after  two  or  three  cer 
tain  visits  to  his  house,  that  he  had  embarked 
on  some  composition  or  other  of  an  ambitious 
and  comprehensive  nature:  a  cantata,  possi 
bly,  or  even  some  higher  flight.  As  he  had 
never  domesticated  musical  theory  and  musi 
cal  notation  in  his  brain,  most  of  his  com 
posing  had  to  be  carried  on  at  the  keyboard 
itself.  The  big  piano  in  the  big  open  drawing- 
[  44  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

room  resounded  with  his  strumming  experi 
ments  in  melody  and  harmony  —  sounds  in 
telligible,  often  enough,  to  no  ears  but  his 
own,  and  not  always  agreeable  to  them.  I 
am  sure  he  tried  his  parents'  patience  cruelly. 
His  reiterated  phrases  and  harmonizings  were 
audible  throughout  a  good  part  of  the  house. 
They  did  nothing  toward  relieving  his 
mother's  headaches,  nothing  toward  raising 
his  father's  hopes  that,  pretty  soon,  he  would 
come  to  grips  with  the  elements  of  Loans  and 
Discounts.  Even  the  servants,  setting  the 
table,  now  and  again  closed  the  dining-room 
door. 

"Oh,  Raymond,  Raymond;  not  to-day!" 
his  mother  would  sometimes  plead. 

I  presume  that,  during  this  period,  the 
diary  was  still  going  on;  and  no  one  with  such 
a  gift  for  writing  will  stop  short  at  a  diary. 
In  fact,  Raymond  tried  his  hand  at  a  few 
short  stories  —  still  another  muse  was  flut 
tering  about  his  temples.  Most  of  these  stories 
came  back;  but  a  few  of  them  got  printed  ob 
scurely  in  mangled  form,  and  the  failure  of  the 
venturesome  periodicals  sometimes  deprived 
[  45  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

him  of  the  honorarium  (as  pay  was  then  pom 
pously  called)  which  would  have  given  the 
last  convincing  touch  to  his  claims  on  author 
ship.  He  spoke  of  these  stories  freely  enough 
to  me,  but  disclaimed  all  attempts  at  poetry : 
short  of  that  field,  I  believe,  he  really  did 
stay  his  hand. 

Well,  perhaps  too  many  good  fairies  — 
good  only  to  the  pitch  of  velleity  —  buzzed 
and  brushed,  like  muses,  or  pseudo-muses, 
about  his  brows.  All  this  unsettled  him  — 
and  sometimes  annoyed  his  daily  associates. 
But  how,  without  these  instinctive  young 
passes  at  Art,  could  the  unceasing,  glamorous 
and  needful  rebirth  of  the  world  get  itself 
accomplished? 

n 

As  for  Johnny  McComas,  he  found  one 
year  of  our  Academy  enough.  It  was  the 
getting  in,  not  the  staying  in,  that  provoked 
his  young  powers.  Our  school,  moreover, 
was  explicitly  classical  in  a  day  when  the  old 
classical  ideal  still  ruled  respected  everywhere; 
and  Johnny,  much  as  he  liked  being  with  us 
I  46  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

and  of  us,  could  not  see  the  world  in  terms 
of  Latin  paradigms.  He  wanted  to  be  "doing 
something";  he  wanted  to  be  "in  business." 
During  the  summer  following  his  year  at 
Dr.  Grant's  I  heard  of  him  as  somebody's 
office-boy  somewhere  downtown,  and  then 
quite  lost  sight  of  him  for  the  five  years  that 
succeeded. 

It  occurred  to  me  that  Johnny  must  be 
doing  just  the  right  thing  for  himself;  he 
would  make  the  sort  of  office-boy  that  "busi 
ness  men"  would  contend  for:  easy  to  im 
agine  the  manoeuvres,  even  the  feuds,  that 
would  enliven  business  blocks  in  the  down 
town  district  for  the  possession  of  Johnny's 
confident  smile  and  dashing,  forthright  way. 
I  learned,  in  due  season,  that  Johnny  had 
cast  in  his  lot  with  a  real-estate  operator,  and 
had  been  cherished,  through  periods  harried 
by  competition,  as  a  pearl  of  price. 

The  city  was  emphatically  still  in  the  "real- 
estate"  stage.  Anybody  arriving  without 
profession  or  training  straightway  began  to 
sell  lots.  Nothing  lay  more  openly  abundant 
than  land;  the  town  had  but  to  propagate 
I  47  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

itself  automatically  over  the  wide  prairies. 
The  wild  flowers  waved  only  to  welcome  the 
surveyor's  gang;  and  new  home-seekers  — 
in  the  jargon  of  the  trade  —  were  ever  hur 
rying  to  rasp  themselves  upon  the  ragged 
edges  of  the  outskirts. 

One  Sunday  morning  in  May,  Raymond 
and  I  determined  on  an  excursion  to  the 
country  —  or,  at  all  events,  to  some  of  the 
remoter  suburbs.  The  bank  would  not  claim 
his  thoughts  for  twenty-four  hours,  nor  the 
law-school  mine.  We  left  the  train  at  a  prom 
ising  point  and  prepared  to  scuffle  over  a 
half-mile  splotched  with  vervain  and  yarrow, 
yet  to  bloom,  toward  a  long,  thin  range  of 
trees  that  seemed  to  mark  the  course  of  some 
small  stream.  But  between  us  and  that  pos 
sible  stream  there  soon  developed  much  be 
sides  the  sprinkling  of  prairie  flowers.  We 
began  to  notice  rough-ploughed  strips  of  land 
that  seemed  to  mean  streets  for  some  new 
subdivision;  piles  of  lumber,  here  and  there, 
which  should  serve  to  realize  the  ideals  of  the 
"home-seekers";  and  presently1  a  gay,  impro 
vised  little  shack  with  a  disproportionate 
[  48  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

sign  to  blazon  the  hopes  and  ambitions  of  a 
well-known  firm  back  in  town.  And  in  the 
doorway  of  the  shack  stood  Johnny  Mc- 
Comas. 

He  was  as  ruddy  as  ever,  and  his  blue  eyes 
were  a  bit  sharper.  He  was  slightly  heavier 
than  either  of  us,  but  no  taller.  He  knew  us 
as  quickly  as  we  knew  him.  For  some  reason 
he  did  not  seem  particularly  glad  to  see  us. 
He  made  the  reason  clear  at  once. 

"They  had  me  out  here  last  Sunday,"  he 
said,  looking  about  his  chaotic  domain  dis 
paragingly,  "and  they  say  they  may  have 
to  have  me  out  here  next  Sunday  —  some 
body 's  sick  or  missing.  But  they  won't,"  he 
continued  darkly.  It  was  a  threat,  we  felt 
—  a  threat  that  would  make  some  pre 
sumptuous  superior  cower  and  conform.  "  I 
really  belong  at  our  branch  in  Dellwood  Park, 
where  there  is  something;  not  out  here,  be 
yond  the  last  of  everything."  And  he  said 
more  to  indicate  that  his  energies  and  abili 
ties  were  temporarily  going  to  waste. 

But  having  put  himself  right  in  his  own 
eyes  and  in  ours,  he  began  to  give  rein  to  his 
\    49    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

fundamental  good  nature.  Emerging  from 
the  cloud  that  was  just  now  darkening  his 
merits  and  his  future,  he  asked,  interestedly 
enough,  what  we  ourselves  were  doing. 

I  had  to  confess  that  I  was  still  a  student. 
Raymond  mentioned  briefly  and  reluctantly 
the  bank.  It  was  nothing  to  him  that  he,  no 
less  than  Johnny,  was  now  a  man  on  a  salary. 

"Bank,  eh? "said  Johnny.  "That's  good. 
We're  thinking  of  starting  a  bank  next  year 
at  our  Dellwood  branch.  It's  far  enough  in, 
and  it  *s  far  enough  out.  Plenty  of  good  little 
businesses  all  around  there.  And  I'm  going 
to  make  them  let  me  have  a  hand  in  manag 
ing  it." 

This  warm  ray  of  hope  from  the  immediate 
future  quite  illumined  Johnny.  He  told  us 
genially  about  the  prospects  of  the  venture 
in  the  midst  of  which  he  was  encamped,  and 
ended  by  feigning  us  as  a  young  bridal  couple 
that  had  come  out  to  look  for  a  "home." 

"There  may  be  one  or  two  along  pretty 

soon,  if  the  day  holds  fair;  so  I  might  as  well 

keep  myself  in  practice."   Then  he  jocularly 

let  himself  loose  on  transportation,  and  part 

f    50    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

payments  down,  and  street  improvements 
"in,"  and  healthful  country  air  for  young 
children.  He  was  very  fluent  and  somewhat 
cynical,  and  turned  the  seamy  side  of  his 
trade  a  little  too  clearly  to  view. 

He  explained  how  the  spring  had  been  ex 
ceptionally  wet  in  that  region,  —  "which, 
after  all,  is  low,"  he  acknowledged,  —  and 
how  his  firm,  by  digging  a  few  trenches  in 
well-considered  directions,  had  drained  all 
its  standing  water  to  adjoining  acres  still 
lower,  the  property  of  a  prospective  rival. 
Recalling  this  smart  trick  made  Johnny 
think  better  of  the  people  who  would  maroon 
him  for  a  succession  of  Sundays,  and  he  be 
came  more  genially  communicative  still. 

"That  gray  streak  off  to  the  west  —  if  you 
can  see  it  —  is  our  water  drying  up.  Better 
be  drying  there  than  here.  You  can  put  a 
solid  foot  on  every  yard  of  our  ground  to-day. 
Come  along  with  me  and  I'll  show  you  your 
cottage  —  domus,  a,  um.  Not  quite  right  ? 
Well,  no  great  matter." 

He  pointed  toward  a  yellow  pile  of  two- 
by-fours,  siding,  and  shingles.  "Be  sure  you 
[  51  ]. 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

make  your   last  payment  before  you  find 
yourselves  warped  out  of  shape." 

We  followed.  Johnny  seemed  much  more 
expert  and  worldly-wise  than  either  of  us. 
We  held  our  innocent  excursion  in  abeyance 
and  bowed  with  a  certain  embarrassed  awe 
to  Johnny's  demonstration  of  his  aptitude 
for  taking  the  world  as  it  was  and  to  his  light- 
handed,  care-free  way  of  handling  so  serious 
a  matter,  to  most  men,  as  the  founding  of  a 
home.  As  we  continued  our  jaunt,  I  began 
to  feel  that  I  now  liked  Johnny  a  little  less 
than  I  could  have  wished. 

in 

At  about  this  time  Raymond  and  I  found 
ourselves  members  of  a  little  circle  that  ex 
pressed  itself  chiefly  through  choral  music. 
It  was  almost  a  neighborhood  circle,  and 
almost  a  self-made  circle  —  it  gradually 
evolved  itself,  with  no  special  guidance  or, 
intention,  until,  finally,  there  it  was.  I,  at 
that  period,  may  have  felt  that  it  would 
verge  on  the  presumptuous  to  pick  and 
choose  —  to  attempt  consciously  the  fabri- 
[  52  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

cation  of  a  social  environment  —  and  so  I 
adopted  with  docility  the  one  which  presented 
itself.  Raymond,  on  the  other  hand,  may 
have  felt  that  even  the  best  which  was  avail 
able  was  unlikely  to  be  good  enough  and 
have  accepted  fatalistically  anything  which 
could  possibly  be  made  to  do. 

Just  why  our  little  group  of  a  dozen  or  so 
should  have  united  on  a  musical  basis  and 
have  expressed  itself  in  a  weekly  "sing"  I 
might  find  it  hard  to  explain.  None  of  us 
fellows  was  especially  blessed  with  a  voice; 
and  the  various  Gertrudes  and  Adeles  that 
met  with  us  were  assuredly  without  any 
marked  sanction  to  vocalize.  Possibly  the 
"sing"  was  the  mere  outcome  of  youthful 
exuberance  and  of  the  tendency  of  young  and 
eager  molecules  to  crystallize  into  what  came, 
later,  to  be  termed  a  "bunch." 

As  for  Raymond  himself,  he  never  sang  at 
all.  "Oh,  come,  Rayme;  join  in!"  the  other 
fellows  would  suggest  —  and  suggest  in  vain. 

"I'm  doing  my  part,"  he  would  return, 
giving  the  piano-stool  a  nearer  hitch  to  the 
keyboard. 

[    53    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

In  fact,  it  was  his  specific  function  to  pre 
side  at  the  Chickering,  the  Weber,  the  Stein- 
way,  according  to  the  facilities  offered  by 
the  particular  home  —  for  we  moved  about 
in  rotation.  This  service,  which  we  presently 
came  to  consider  sufficient  in  itself,  dispensed 
him  from  exhibiting  his  nature  in  so  articu 
late  a  thing  as  actual  vocal  utterance.  This 
he  was  quite  opposed  to :  he  would  never  even 
try  a  hymn  in  church.  But  he  could  accom 
pany;  he  could  improvise;  he  could  modulate; 
he  could  transpose  any  simple  air.  The  ease 
and  readiness  with  which  he  did  all  this  made 
less  obvious  —  indeed,  almost  imperceptible 
—  his  fundamental  unwillingness  to  aban 
don  himself  before  others  (especially  if  mem 
bers  of  his  own  circle)  to  any  manifestation 
that  might  be  taxed  with  even  a  remote 
emotionalism.  And  yet,  at  that  very  time, 
he  was  laying  the  foundations  of  a  claim  to 
be  that  broad  and  vague  thing  called  an 
"artist."  Even  as  early  as  this,  apparently, 
he  was  troubled  by  two  contradictory  im 
pulses:  he  wanted  to  be  an  artist  and  give 
himself  out;  and  he  wanted  to  be  a  gentle- 
[  54  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

man  and  hold  himself  in.    An  entangling, 
ruinous  paradox. 

This  comment  on  Raymond's  musical  in 
clinations  and  musical  services  may  require  a 
bit  of  shading:  I  believe  that,  after  all,  he 
never  quite  cared  for  music  unless  he  had, 
in  all  literalness,  his  "hand"  in  it.  He 
never  liked  to  hear  any  one  else  play  the 
piano,  still  less  the  violin;  concerts  of  all 
sorts  were  likely  to  bore  him;  and  he  never 
really  rose  to  an  understanding  of  the  more 
recondite  and  elaborate  musical  forms:  to 
have  his  fingers  on  the  keyboard  —  especially 
when  improvising  in  a  secure  inarticulateness 
—  was  his  great  desideratum. 

In  our  little  group  we  ran  from  seventeen 
to  nineteen;  some  of  us  just  finishing  high 
school,  others  just  on  the  edge  of  college, 
others  (like  myself)  engaged  in  professional 
studies,  and  still  others  making  a  debut  in 
business  as  clerks.  We  sang  mostly  the  inno 
cent  old  songs,  American  or  English,  of  an 
earlier  day,  and  sometimes  the  decorous 
numbers  from  the  self-respecting  operetta 
recently  established  in  London.  No  contribu- 
[  55  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

tions  from  a  new  and  dubious  foreign  element 
had  yet  come  to  cheapen  our  taste,  to  dis 
turb  our  nervous  systems,  or  to  throw  upon 
the  negro,  the  Hawaiian,  or  the  Argentine 
the  onus  of  a  crass  passion  that  one  was  more 
desirous  of  expressing  than  of  acknowledging. 
No;  there  was  assuredly  no  excess  of  emo- 
tion*al  life  —  whether  good  or  bad  —  in  the 
body  of  music  we  favored.  Perhaps  what  our 
little  circle  really  desired  was  simply  good- 
fellowship  and  a  high  degree  of  harmonious 
clamor.  Certainly  all  our  doings,  whether 
on  Friday  evening,  or  on  the  other  fore 
noons,  afternoons,  and  evenings  of  the  week, 
were  quite  devoid  of  an  embarrassing  sex- 
consciousness.  We  "trained  together,"  as 
the  expression  went  —  all  the  fellows  and  all 
the  Gertrudes  and  Adeles  —  with  no  sense 
of  malaise,  and  postponing,  or  setting  aside, 
in  the  miraculous  American  fashion,  all  sex 
ual  considerations  whatsoever. 

I  hardly  know  just   why  I   should   have 
thought  that  Johnny  McComas  could  be  in 
troduced  successfully  into  this  circle.  Johnny, 
as  he  had  told  us  in  his  suburb,  had  cut  loose 
F    56    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

from  his  parents.  He  was  now  living  on  his 
own,  in  a  neighborhood  not  far  from  ours  — 
from  his,  as  it  had  once  been.  One  evening 
I  ventured  to  bring  him  round.  He  developed 
an  obstreperous  baritone  —  it  was  the  same 
voice,  now  more  specifically  in  action,  that 
I  had  first  heard  on  the  devastated  prairie; 
and  he  made  himself  rather  preponderant, 
whether  he  happened  to  know  the  song  or  not. 

"Why,  you're  quite  an  addition!"  com 
mented  one  of  the  girls,  in  surprise  —  almost 
in  consternation. 

"He  is,  indeed,  —  if  he  does  n't  drown 
us  all  out!"  muttered  one  of  the  fellows,  be 
hind  his  back. 

Yes,  Johnny  was  vociferous  —  so  long  as 
the  singing  went  on.  But  he  developed,  be 
sides  an  obstreperous  voice,  an  obstreperous 
interest  in  one  of  our  Adeles  —  a  piercing  so 
prano  who  was  our  mainstay;  and  he  showed 
some  tendency  to  defeat  the  occasion  by  segre 
gating  her  in  a  bay  window.  Segregation  was 
the  last  of  our  aims,  and  Johnny  did  not  quite 
please.  Furthermore,  Johnny  seemed  to  feel 
himself  among  a  lot  of  boys  who  were  yet  to 
f  57  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

make  their  "start,"  overlooking  the  fact  that 
Raymond  was  in  the  bank,  and  ignorant  of 
the  further  fact  that  one  of  our  fellows  was  just 
beginning  to  be  a  salesman  in  a  bond  house. 
Johnny  became  violently  communicative 
about  the  attractions  of  Dellwood  Park  and 
seemed  to  want  to  figure  demonstratively  in 
the  eyes  of  Gertrude  and  Adele  as  an  up-and- 
coming  paladin  of  the  business  world.  To 
most  of  us  he  seemed  too  self-assertive,  too 
self-assured.  He  knew  too  clearly  what  he 
wanted,  and  showed  it  too  clearly.  Indeed 
it  became  apparent  to  me  that  while  a  boy  of 
twelve  may  be  accepted  easily  (at  least  in 
an  early,  simple  society),  a  youth  of  eighteen 
cannot  altogether  escape  the  issues  of  caste. 
It  was  borne  in  on  me  presently  that  Johnny 
might  as  well  have  remained  away.  In  fact  — • 

"We  shan't  need  him  again,"  said  the 
brother  of  the  soprano  to  me,  as  the  evening 
broke  up. 

And  Raymond  himself  remarked  to  me  a 
day  later :  — 

"Don't  push  him;  he'll  get  along  without 
your  help." 

I    58    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

IV 

While  the  rankness  of  new  elements  in  a 
new  era  had  not  penetrated  our  homes,  it  had 
begun  to  make  itself  manifest  in  public  places. 
The  town,  within  sixty  years,  had  risen  from 
a  population  of  nearly  nil  to  a  population  of 
some  five  or  six  hundred  thousand;  and  it  was 
only  in  due  course,  perhaps,  that  "vice"  now 
raised  its  head  and  that  a  "criminal  class" 
came  into  effective,  unabashed  functioning. 
It  was  to  be  many  years  before  the  better  ele 
ments  learned  how  to  combine  for  an  efficient 
opposition  to  impudent  evils.  A  heterogene 
ous  populace,  newly  arrived,  was  still  willing 
to  elect  mayors  of  native  blood;  but  one  of 
these,  elected  and  reflected  to  the  town's 
lasting  harm,  might  as  well  have  been  of  the 
newer,  and  wholly  exterior,  tradition:  a  genial, 
loose-lipped  demagogue  who  saw  an  oppor 
tunity  to  weld  the  miscellany  of  discrepant 
elements  into  a  compact  engine  for  the  further 
ance  of  his  own  coarse  ambitions,  and  who 
allowed  his  supporters  such  a  measure  of 
license  as  was  needed  to  make  their  support 

[    59    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

continuing.  A  shameless  new  quarter  sud 
denly  obtruded  itself  with  an  ugly  emphasis; 
unclassifiables,  male  and  female,  began  to 
assert  and  disport  themselves  more  daringly 
than  dreamt  of  heretofore;  and  many  good 
citizens  who  would  crowd  the  town  forward 
to  a  population  of  a  million  and  to  a  status 
undeniably  metropolitan  came  to  stroll  these 
tawdry,  noisy  new  streets  with  a  curiosity  of 
mind  at  once  disturbed,  titillated,  and  some 
how  gratified.  Said  some:  "This  is  a  new 
thing;  do  we  quite  like  it? "  Said  others:  " The 
town  is  certainly  moving  ahead;  we  don't 
know  but  that  we  do." 

Yes,  a  good  many  social  observers  set  forth 
to  see  for  themselves  the  new  phenomena  and 
to  appraise  the  value  of  them  in  the  coming 
political  and  social  life  of  the  community.  Of 
course,  many  of  these  observers  were  too 
young  and  heedless  to  draw  inferences  from 
the  sudden  flood  of  new  bars  and  bright  lights 
and  crass  tunes  and  youthful  creatures  in  short 
skirts  who  seemed  not  quite  to  know  whether 
their  proper  element  was  the  stage  above  or 
the  range  of  tables  below;  in  fact,  these  ob- 
[  60  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

servers  waived  all  attempt  at  speculative 
thought  and  became  participants. 

Raymond  and  I  had  heard  comments  on 
the  new  developments  from  OUT  elders;  we 
were  not  without  our  own  curiosity  (though 
we  had  enough  fastidiousness  not  to  graze 
things  very  close,  still  less  to  wade  into  them 
very  deep),  and  we  decided  one  evening  that 
we  would  look  into  two  or  three  of  these  new 
and  notable  places  of  public  entertainment. 

The  first  of  them  offered  little.  The  second 
of  them  developed  Johnny  McComas.  He 
sat  at  a  table,  talking  too  familiarly,  or  at 
least  too  forbearingly,  with  a  rubicund,  hard- 
faced  man  in  shirt-sleeves  standing  at  his 
elbow  —  probably  the  head  of  the  place,  or 
his  first  aide;  and  he  was  buying  obviously 
unnecessary  glasses  of  things  for  two  of  the 
young  creatures  in  short  skirts  —  Gertrudes 
and  Adeles  of  that  particular  stratum,  or 
Katies  and  Maggies,  if  preferred.  Johnny  sat 
there  happy  enough:  an  early  example  of  the 
young  business  warrior  diverting  himself 
after  the  fray.  Years  afterward  the  scene  came 
back  to  me  when  I  met  with  a  showy  paint- 

[    61     ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

ing  in  the  resonant  new  lobby  of  one  of  the 
greater  hotels.  It  showed  a  terrace  overlook 
ing  some  placid  Greek  sea;  the  happy  warrior 
standing  ungirt  and  uncasqued,  with  a  beau 
tiful  maiden  of  indeterminate  status  seated 
beside  him;  a  graceful  attendant  holding  a 
wreath  above  each  happy  and  prosperous 
head,  and  a  group  of  sandaled  dancing-girls 
lightly  footing  it  for  the  pleasure  of  the  for 
tunate  pair;  the  whole  scene  illuminated  by 
the  supreme,  smiling  self-satisfaction  of  the 
relaxed  soldier  amid  the  pipings  of  peace.  So 
Johnny;  he  had  earned  the  money  and  won 
the  right  to  spend  it  in  pleasure;  his,  too,  the 
duty  of  refreshing  himself  for  the  strenuous 
morrow. 

He  saw  us  and  nodded.  "Life!"  —  that 
was  what  he  seemed  to  say.  He  made  a  feint 
to  interest  us  in  his  companions;  but  they 
were  poor  things,  as  we  knew,  and  as  he  must 
have  known  too.  He  left  them  without  much 
regret  and  without  much  ceremony,  and  took 
us  on  to  the  next  place. 

"It's  life,  isn't  it?"  he  said  in  so  many 
words. 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

Raymond's  nose  went  up  disdainfully. 
"Life!"  Some  such  manifestations,  if  properly 
handled  and  framed,  might  be  life  in  Paris, 
perhaps;  but  he  could  not  accept  them  as  life 
here  at  home,  within  a  mile  or  two  of  his  own 
study.  What  this  evening  offered  him  seemed 
to  require  a  considerable  touch  of  refining 
before  it  could  reach  acceptance.  It  was  all 
only  an  imperfectly  specious  substitute  for 
life,  only  a  coarse  parody  on  life.  The  town, 
he  told  me  the  next  day,  made  him  think  of 
a  pumpkin:  it  was  big  and  sudden  and  coarse- 
textured.  "I've  had  enough  of  it,"  he  added; 
"I  want  something  different,  and  something 
a  lot  better." 

Johnny,  as  I  say,  took  us  to  the  next  place; 
we  might  not  have  known  how  to  take  our 
selves  there.  Johnny  honestly  liked  the  glare, 
the  noise,  the  uproarious  music,  and  the  hu 
man  press  both  on  the  sidewalks  and  in  the 
packed,  panting  interiors.  I  liked  it  all,  too, 
—  for  once  in  a  way;  but  I  soon  saw  that,  for 
Raymond,  even  once  in  a  way  was  once  too 
often.  In  this  last  place  a  girl  with  a  hand  too 
familiarly  laid  on  his  arm  gave  the  finishing 
I  63  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

touch;  it  was  a  coarse,  dingy  little  hand,  with 
some  tawdry  rings.  Raymond  never  liked 
close  quarters;  neither  in  those  days,  nor 
ever  after,  did  he  care  to  come  decisively  to 
grips  with  actual  life.  "Keep  off!"  was  what 
his  look  said  to  the  offender.  The  poor,  puz 
zled  little  debutante  quickly  stepped  back, 
and  we  all  regained  the  street.  Raymond  was 
trembling  with  embarrassment  and  vexation. 

"Why,  you  were  making  a  hit,"  said 
Johnny. 

"Let's  get  home,"  said  Raymond  to  me, 
ignoring  Johnny.  "This  is  enough,  and  more 
than  enough.  What  a  hole  this  town  is  com 
ing  to  be!" 

V 

Raymond  stayed  on  at  the  bank,  though  — 
if  one  might  judge  by  his  words  and  actions 
—  with  no  enthusiasm  in  the  present  and  no 
hopefulness  for  the  future.  He  did  what  he 
had  to  do,  and  did  it  fairly  well;  but  there  was 
no  sign  that  he  was  looking  forward,  and  there 
remained  scant  likelihood  that  he  would  meet 
the  expectations  of  his  father  and  grandfather 
[  64  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

by  mastering  the  business.  On  the  contrary,  I 
think  he  actually  set  his  face  against  it:  he 
seemed  as  resolute  not  to  learn  banking  as  he 
had  been  resolute  not  to  learn  dancing.  Pro 
fessor  Baltique  and  the  little  girls  in  light- 
soled  shoes  and  bright-colored  sashes  had 
given  him  up  in  the  waltz;  and  it  looked  as  if 
James  B.  Prince  must  presently  renounce  all 
hope  of  his  ever  learning  how  to  turn  the  col 
lective  spare  cash  of  many  depositors  to  pro 
fit.  I  recall  the  day  when  the  chief  little  light 
of  the  dancing-class,  after  some  moments  of 
completely  static  tramplings  by  Raymond  in 
the  midst  of  the  floor,  suddenly  began  to  pout 
and  to  frown,  and  then  left  him  in  the  midst 
of  the  dance  and  of  the  company  and  came  to 
tears  before  she  could  reach  an  elder  sister  by 
the  side  wall.  Raymond  accepted  the  inci 
dent  without  comment.  If  his  demeanor  ex 
pressed  anything,  it  expressed  his  satisfaction 
at  carrying  a  point. 

But  he  did  not  wait  until  a  vexed  and  dis 
appointed   bank   left   him    high    and    dry. 
Though  he  must  have    known    that    many 
young  clerks  in  the  office  envied  him  his  billet 
[    65    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

and  that  many  young  fellows  outside  it  would 
have  been  glad  to  get  in  on  any  terms  what 
ever,  he  never  gave  a  sign  that  he  valued  his 
opportunity;  and  when  he  finally  pulled  out  it 
was  with  no  regard  to  any  possible  successor. 

The  younger  men  in  the  bank  were  a  rather 
trim  lot,  and  were  expected  to  be.  They  did 
wonders,  in  the  way  of  dressing,  on  their  sixty 
or  seventy-five  dollars  a  month.  Raymond's 
own  dressing,  for  some  little  time  past,  had 
grown  somewhat  slack  and  careless.  I  did  him 
the  injustice  of  supposing  that  he  felt  himself 
to  be  himself,  and  hors  concours  so  far  as  the 
general  body  of  clerklings  was  concerned;  but 
he  had  other  reasons. 

He  had  given  up  buying  books  and  period 
icals  :  no  new  volumes  to  be  seen  in  his  room  ex 
cept  works  of  travel  (preferably  guide-books) 
and  grammars  and  dictionaries  of  foreign  lan 
guages.  For  all  such  works  of  general  uplift 
and  inspiration  as  the  intending  tourist  in  Eu 
rope  might  expect  to  profit  by,  he  depended  on 
circulating  libraries  or  the  shelves  of  friends. 
I  myself  lent  him  a  book  of  travels  in  the  Dol 
omites,  and  scarcely  know,  now,  whether  I  did 
[  66  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

well  or  ill.  Raymond,  in  short,  was  silently, 
doggedly  saving,  with  the  intention  of  taking 
a  trip  —  or  of  making  a  sojourn  —  abroad. 

The  cleavage  came  in  James  Prince's  front 
parlor,  one  Sunday  afternoon,  and  I  hap 
pened  to  be  present.  A  very  few  words  suf 
ficed.  Raymond's  father  had  picked  up  a 
thick  little  book  from  the  centre-table,  the 
only  book  in  the  room,  and  was  looking  back 
and  forth  between  this  wo^k  —  an  Italian 
dictionary  —  and  Raymond  himself. 

"What  do  you  expect  to  get  out  of  this?" 
he  asked. 

"I  expect  to  learn  some  Italian,"  Raymond 
replied. 

"Would  n't  French  be  more  useful?" 

"I  know  all  the  French  I  need." 
,  "Where  do  you  expect  to  use  your  Italian?  " 

"In  Italy.  I  did  n't  go  to  college." 

Impossible  to  depict  the  quality  of  Ray 
mond's  tone  in  speaking  these  five  words. 
There  was  no  color,  no  emphasis,  no  seeming 
presentation  of  a  case.  It  was  the  cool,  level 
statement  of  a  fact;  nor  did  he  try  to  make  the 
fact  too  pertinent,  too  cogent.  An  hour-long 
[  67  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

oration  would  not  have  been  more  effective. 
He  had  calmly  taken  off  a  lid  and  had  per 
mitted  a  look  within.  His  father  saw  —  saw 
that  whatever  Raymond,  by  plus  or  by  minus, 
might  be,  he  was  no  longer  a  boy. 

"I  know,"  said  James  Prince,  slowly.  He 
was  looking  past  us  both  and  was  opening  and 
shutting  the  covers  of  the  book  unconsciously. 

A  day  or  two  later,  Raymond  gave  me  the 
rest.  His  father  had  asked  him  how  much 
money  he  had.  Out  of  his  sixty  or  seventy- 
five  a  month  Raymond  had  set  aside  several 
hundreds;  "and  I  said  I  could  make  the  rest 
by  corresponding  for  some  newspaper,"  he 
continued.  This  was  in  the  simple  day  when 
travel-letters  from  Europe  were  still  printed 
and  read  in  the  newspapers,  and  even  "re 
munerated"  by  editors.  Incredible,  perhaps, 
in  this  day;  yet  true  for  that. 

His  father  had  asked  him  how  long  he  in 
tended  to  be  away.  Raymond  was  noncom 
mittal.  He  might  travel  for  a  year,  or  he 
might  try  "  living  "  there  for  a  while  —  a  long 
while.  A  matter  of  funds  and  of  luck,  it 
seemed.  His  father,  without  pressing  him 
[  68  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

closely,  offered  to  double  whatever  sum  he 
had  saved  up.  He  appeared  neither  pleased 
nor  displeased  by  Raymond's  course.  He  felt 
I  suppose,  that  the  bank  would  hardly  suffer, 
and  that  Raymond  (whom  he  did  not  under 
stand)  might  get  some  profit.  Fathers  have 
their  own  opinions  of  sons,  which  opinions 
range,  I  dare  say,  all  the  way  from  charitable 
ness  to  desperation.  In  the  case  of  my  own 
son,  I  am  glad  to  say,  a  very  slight  degree  of 
charitableness  was  all  the  tax  laid  upon  me. 
There  were  some  distressing  months  of  angu 
larity,  both  in  physique  and  in  manners,  at 
seventeen;  then  a  quick  and  miraculous  es 
cape  into  trimness  and  grace.  And  my  grand 
son,  now  at  nine,  promises  to  be,  I  am  glad  to 
state,  even  more  of  a  success  and  a  pleasure. 
As  for  Raymond,  he  had  developed  unevenly : 
his  growth  had  gone  athwart.  Possibly  the 
"world,"  that  vast,  vague  entity  of  which 
his  father's  knowledge  was  restricted  almost 
to  one  narrow  field,  might  aid  in  straighten 
ing  the  boy  out. 

"Well,  try  it  for  a  year,"  his  father  said, 
not  unkindly,  and  almost  wistfully. 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

VI 

When  Johnny  McComas  heard  of  Ray 
mond's  resolve,  he  drew  up  his  round  face  into 
a  grimace.  He  thought  the  step  queer,  and  he 
said  so.  But,  "Oh,  well,  if  a  fellow  can  afford 
it!"  he  added.  And  he  did  not  explain  just 
what  meaning  he  attached  to  the  word 
"afford." 

But  Johnny  could  see  no  valid  reason  for  a 
fellow's  giving  the  town  the  go-by  at  nineteen 
and  at  just  that  stage  of  the  town's  develop 
ment.  Johnny  was  so  made  that  the  com 
munity  which  housed  him  was  necessarily  the 
centre  of  the  cosmos;  he  himself,  howsoever 
placed,  was  necessarily  at  the  centre  of  the 
circle  —  so  why  leave  the  central  dot  for  some 
vague  situation  on  the  circumference?  And 
take  this  particular  town:  what  a  present! 
what  a  future!  what  a  wide  extension  over 
the  limitless  prairie  with  every  passing  month! 
—  a  prairie  which  merely  needed  to  be  cut 
up  into  small  checkers  and  sold  to  hopeful 
newcomers;  a  prairie  which  produced  profits  as 
freely  as  it  produced  goldenrod  and  asters;  a 
[  70  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

prairie  upon  which  home-seekers  might  settle 
down  under  agents  whose  wide  range,  running 
from  helpful  cooperation  to  absolute  flim 
flam,  need  leave  no  competent  " operator" 
other  than  rich. 

"What  are  you  going  to  get  out  of  it?" 
asked  Johnny  earnestly. 

Raymond  attempted  no  set  reply.  Johnny, 
he  recognized,  was  out  for  positive  results, 
for  tangible  returns;  his  idea  was  to  get  on 
in  the  world  by  definite  and  unmistakable 
stages.  Raymond  never  welcomed  the  idea  of 
"getting  on"  —  not  at  least  in  the  sense  in 
which  his  own  day  and  place  used  the  expres 
sion.  To  do  so  was  but  to  acknowledge  some 
early  inferiority.  Raymond  was  not  conscious 
of  any  inferiority  to  be  overcome.  Johnny 
might,  of  course,  on  this  particular  point,  feel 
as  he  chose. 

About  this  time  old  Jehiel  Prince  began 
to  come  more  frequently  to  his  son's  house. 
He  was  yellower  and  grayer,  and  he  was  get 
ting  testy  and  irascible.  He  sometimes  brought 
his  lawyer  with  him,  and  the  pair  made  James 
Prince  an  active  participant  in  their  concerns. 
[  71  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

However,  Jehiel  was  perhaps  less  unhappy 
here  than  in  his  own  home.  When  there,  he 
sat  moodily  alone,  of  evenings,  in  his  base 
ment  office;  and  Raymond,  who  was  some 
times  sent  over  with  documents  or  with  mes 
sages,  impatiently  reported  him  to  me  as 
«  i  ,, 
glum. 

"Poor  old  fellow!  he  does  n't  know  how  to 
live!"  said  Raymond  in  complacent  pity. 
He  himself,  of  course,  had  but  to  assemble  all 
the  bright-hued  elements  that  awaited  him  a 
few  months  ahead  to  make  his  own  life  a 
poem,  a  song. 

"I  can  do  that,"  he  once  said,  in  a  moment 
when  exaltation  had  briefly  made  him  con 
fidential.  ; 

Raymond  never  saw  his  grandmother  —  at 
least  he  never  cared  to  see  her.  Here,  if  no 
where  else,  he  was  willing  to  take  a  cue,  and  he 
took  it  from  the  head  of  the  family.  He 
thought  that  so  many  years  of  town  life 
might  have  made  her  a  little  less  rustic  in 
the  end:  the  York  State  of  1835  or  of  1840 
need  not  have  remained  York  State  so  im- 
mitigably.  And  if  there  was  a  domestic  blight 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

on  the  house  he  was  willing  to  believe  that 
she  was  two  thirds  to  blame:  behind  the  old 
soul  was  a  pack  of  poor  relations.  Particularly 
a  brother-in-law  —  a  bilious,  cadaverous  fel 
low,  whom  I  saw  once,  and  once  was  enough. 
He  had  been  an  itinerant  preacher  farther 
East,  and  he  lived  in  a  woeful  little  cottage 
along  one  of  Jehiel's  horse-car  routes.  His 
mournful-eyed  wife  was  always  asking  help. 
He  too  had  "gone  into  real-estate,"  and  un 
successfully.  He  was  the  dull  reverse  of  that 
victorious  obverse  upon  which  Johnny  Mc- 
Comas  was  beginning  to  shine. 

Another  of  her  relatives,  a  niece,  had  mar 
ried  a  small-town  sharper.  He  had  brought 
her  to  the  larger  town,  and  his  sharpness  had 
taken  on  a  keener  edge.  He,  too,  had  gone 
into  real-estate  —  a  lean,  wiry  little  man,  in 
credibly  arid  and  energetic,  and  carrying  a 
preposterously  large  mustache.  There  was 
trouble  with  him  after  Jehiel's  death.  It  de 
veloped  that  one  of  the  documents  which  old 
Beulah  Prince  had  been  cajoled  or  hectored 
into  signing  had  deeded  to  him  —  tempora 
rily  and  for  a  specific  purpose  —  some  forty 
[  73  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

acres  of  purple  and  yellow  prairie  flowers,  de 
lightful  blossoms  nodding  and  swaying  in  the 
wind,  and  that  he  had  refused  to  deed  more 
than  half  of  them  back:  his  services  at  that 
particular  juncture  were  "worth  something," 
he  said.  Well,  life  (as  may  have  been  re 
marked  previously)  would  be  quite  tolerable 
without  one's  relatives.  Meanwhile  the  sum 
mer  flowers  bloomed  and  nodded  on,  under 
the  windy  blue  sky,  all  unaware  of  their  dis 
grace. 

A  month  after  Raymond's  decision,  flowers 
(of  the  sort  favored  in  cemeteries)  were  trying 
to  bloom  over  old  Jehiel.  Some  stroke,  some 
lesion,  had  put  a  period  to  the  unhappy  ca 
reer  of  this  grim  old  man.  Raymond  set  to 
one  side,  for  a  few  weeks,  his  new  trunk  and 
portmanteau;  for  a  few  weeks  only  —  he  had 
no  notion  of  making,  ultimately,  any  great 
change  in  his  plans.  It  was  obvious  that 
James  Prince  was  looking  forward  to  a  year 
or  two  of  harassing  procedure  in  the  courts, 
for  old  Jehiel's  estate  was  unlikely  to  smooth 
out  with  celerity;  but  Raymond  was  clearly 
of  no  use  at  home,  even  as  a  mere  source  of 
[  74  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

sympathy.  A  fortnight  after  his  grandfather's 
funeral  he  was  off. 

The  singing-class  would  have  given  him 
good-bye  in  a  special  session;  but  his  eyes 
were  now  on  brighter  matters  and  the  vocal 
izing  Gertrudes  and  Adeles  were  dim.  He  got 
out  of  it.  Besides,  the  affair  might  come  to 
involve  something  like  ceremony;  and  he  was 
always  desirous  of  avoiding  (save  in  the  arts) 
the  ceremonial  side  of  life.  When  he  came 
back  from  his  first  sojourn  on  the  Continent 
he  was  a  young  man  of  mark,  as  things  went 
in  our  particular  town  and  time;  or,  rather, 
he  might  have  been  such,  had  he  but  chosen. 
The  family  fortunes  were  then  merely  at  the 
stage  of  worry  and  still  far  from  that  of  im 
pending  disaster.  Raymond  came  back  with 
money,  position,  and  a  certain  aureole  of 
personal  distinction  —  just  the  sort  of  young 
man  who  would  be  asked  to  act  as  usher  at 
a  wedding.  He  was  asked  repeatedly;  but  he 
never  acted,  and  his  excuses  and  subterfuges 
for  avoiding  such  a  service  almost  became 
one  of  the  comedies  of  the  day.  He  had 
no  relish  for  seeing  himself  walking  ceremo- 
I  75  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

nially  up  a  church  aisle  under  the  eyes  of 
hundreds,  and  I  knew  better  than  to  ask 
him  to  walk  up  any  aisle  for  me.  He  never 
did  the  thing  but  once,  and  that  was  under 
the  inescapable  compulsion  of  his  fiancee  — • 
who,  for  her  part,  insisted  on  eyes  and  plenty 
of  them.  A  man  may  never  cease  to  be  as 
tonished  at  the  workings  of  feminine  prefer 
ences  on  such  an  occasion,  but  can  hardly 
escape  accommodating  himself  to  them.  Ger 
trudes  are  Gertrudes. 

But  the  wedding  is  years  ahead,  while  the 
departure  for  Europe  is  imminent.  Raymond 
had  a  tepid,  awkward  parting  with  his  mother, 
whose  headaches  would  not  allow  her  to  go 
to  the  train;  and  he  shook  hands  rather  coldly 
and  constrainedly  with  his  father,  who  would 
have  welcomed,  as  I  guess,  some  slight  show  of 
filial  warmth,  and  he  threw  an  embarrassedly 
facetious  word  to  me  about  the  weight  of  his 
portmanteau,  and  so  was  off.  And  it  was 
years,  rather  than  months,  before  he  came 
back. 


PART  III 
I 

WHILE  Raymond  was  taking  his  course 
abroad,  Johnny  McComas  was  shaping  his 
course  at  home.  A  colorless,  unbiased  state 
ment  —  as  it  was  meant  to  be;  one  which, 
despite  the  slight  difference  between  "taking" 
and  "  shaping,"  has  no  slant  and  displays  no 
animus.  Colorless,  yes;  too  colorless,  perhaps 
you  will  object.  If  so,  I  will  reword  the  mat 
ter.  While  Raymond,  then,  was  in  Europe 
cultivating  his  gentler  faculties,  Johnny  re 
mained  in  America,  strengthening  certain 
specific  powers.  Or,  again:  while  Raymond 
was  preparing,  or  so  he  thought,  for  a  desir 
ably  decorative  place  in  the  "world"  (the 
world  at  large),  Johnny  was  qualifying  him 
self,  as  he  felt  sure,  for  an  important  and  re 
munerative  position  in  that  particular  section 
of  the  world  to  which  he  had  decided  to  con 
fine  his  endeavors.  And  if  you  ask  me,  after 
I  have  colored  a  colorless  statement,  to  bias 
[  77  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

an  unbiased  one,  I  shall  refuse.  I  am  not 
taking  sides.  Each  of  them  was  following 
his  own  likings  —  not  the  worst  of  rules  for  a 
growing  and  avid  organism. 

Raymond  wrote,  of  course,  —  it  was  impos 
sible  that  he  should  not;  and  I  think  I  showed 
one  or  two  of  his  early  letters  to  Johnny. 
Johnny  was  not  exactly  interested;  vistas 
were  opened  for  which  he  had  no  eyes  and 
which  possessed  no  appositeness  to  his  own 
aims. 

"Still  over  there,  eh?"  he  asked,  on  my 
producing  a  second  letter.  "These  are  the 
years  that  count,"  he  added.  He  was  probably 
implying  that  the  final  score  would  make  a 
better  showing  for  the  man  who  spent  those 
years  in  his  native  and  proper  environment. 

He  disregarded  the  general  drift  of  the  let 
ters,  but  hit  upon  one  or  two  "novel  expres 
sions,  and  repeated  them,  half-quizzical,  half- 
intrigued. 

"  Still  over  there,"  I  echoed.'  A  developing 
nature,  I  felt,  must  reach  out  for  whatever 
it  needs;  and,  in  simpler  form,  I  said  so. 

"Well,  I'm  no  misfit,"  he  rejoined  briefly. 
[  78  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

To  "feel  at  home"  at  home  —  that,  I  pre 
sume,  was  the  advantage  he  was  asserting. 

Johnny,  "at  home,"  was  not  long  in  out 
growing  the  opportunities  of  Dellwood  Park. 
Though  he  did  not  make,  quite  yet,  the  cen 
tral  district,  a  year  or  two  later  found  him 
in  an  older  and  more  important  suburb  —  one 
that  had  passed  the  first  acuteness  of  specula 
tion  and  had  pretty  well  settled  down  to  a 
regulated  life.  It  was  not  a  suburb  of  the 
first  rank,  nor  even  perhaps  of  the  second; 
but  it  suited  his  tastes  and  his  present  pur 
poses.  The  new  business  combined  banking 
and  real-estate,  and  the  banking  department 
even  maintained  a  small  safety-deposit  vault. 
There  was  also  some  insurance;  and  a  little 
of  mortgage-broking.  Johnny  was  a  highly 
prized  element  in  this  business  and  was 
pleased  from  the  start  with  the  outlook. 

"A  fellow,"  he  said,  "can  pick  up  more 
experience  out  there  in  a  month  than  he  could 
in  one  of  these  big  downtown  offices  in  a 
year." 

Nearly  two  years  passed  before  I  was  to  see 
him  in  his  new  environment.  There  came  up 
[  79  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

a  bit  of  business  for  a  suburban  client  of  mine 
which  could  as  well  be  settled  at  Johnny's 
place  as  at  another.  It  needed  no  more  than 
a  glance  to  perceive  that  Johnny  was  the 
dominant  factor  of  the  little  institution.  His 
was  the  biggest  roller-top  seen  through  a 
maze  of  gilt  letters  on  a  vast  sheet  of  plate 
glass  by  commuters  turning  the  corner  morn 
ing  and  evening.  His,  too,  chiefly,  the  defer 
ence  of  clerks  and  office-boy.  He  was  ruddy 
and  robust,  and  seemed  likely  to  impose  him 
self  anywhere,  when  the  time  came.  Thus  far, 
a  small  Forum,  perhaps;  but  he  was  the 
Caesar  in  it.  He  did  not  disdain  to  attend  to 
my  affair  himself;  he  even  showed  an  em 
phatic,  if  not  ponderous,  bonhomie. 

Just  as  I  was  getting  up  to  leave,  a  man  of 
forty-five  or  more,  with  the  general  aspect  of 
a  contractor's  foreman,  put  in  his  head.  It 
was  Johnny's  father. 

"I  guess  you  know  George  Waite,"  Johnny 
said  to  him;  "and  I  guess  he  knows  you." 

We  shook  hands,  under  Johnny's  direc 
tion,  and  said  that  he  was  right.  His  father's 
hand  —  rough  and  with  a  broken  nail  or 
[  80  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

two  —  was  that  of  a  superintendent  who  on 
occasion  helped  with  a  plank  or  a  mortar 
board.  He  had  an  open  face  and  a  pleasant 
manner;  he  was  not  at  all  the  dominant  per 
sonage  I  remembered  meeting  in  that  "yard," 
years  ago.  Johnny,  it  seemed,  was  putting  up 
a  row  of  small  houses  on  the  suburb's  edge, 
and  his  father  was  supervising  the  job.  Johnny 
was  pretty  direct  in  saying  what  he  wanted 
done,  or  not  done,  in  connection  with  this 
work;  and  if  his  father  made  a  suggestion  it 
was  as  likely  as  not  to  be  overruled.  He  was 
only  one  of  the  senators  in  Johnny's  little 
curia,  and  probably  far  from  the  most  impor 
tant  of  them. 

Johnny's  father  got  away,  after  all,  before 
I  did.  Johnny  asked  me  to  stay  for  a  little, 
and  there  was  not  much  for  a  young  profes 
sional  man  to  do  after  catching  the  4.52  into 
town.  We  sat  for  a  while  talking  of  indifferent 
matters.  Johnny,  surrounded  by  his  own 
prosperity,  asked  with  a  show  of  interest,  and 
without  condescension,  about  my  progress 
in  the  law,  and  I  was  replying  with  the  cau 
tious  vagueness  of  one  whose  practice  is  not 
[  81  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

yet  all  he  hopes  it  will  be.  During  this  time 
I  had  noticed,  through  the  maze  of  gilt  letter 
ing,  a  limousine  standing  just  round  the  corner. 
Its  curtains  were  drawn:  "an  odd  circum 
stance,"  I  had  commented  inwardly.  All  of 
a  sudden  the  street-door  of  the  bank  burst 
open,  and  three  masked  men,  brandishing 
revolvers,  rushed  in. 

"You  cover  the  cashier!"  cried  one;  "we'll 
take  care  of  the  vault!" 

Johnny  McComas  flung  open  a  drawer, 
seized  a  revolver  of  his  own,  sprang  to  his 
feet  — 

Pardon  me,  dear  reader.  The  simple  fact 
is,  I  have  suddenly  been  struck  by  my  lack 
of  drama.  You  see  how  awkwardly  I  provide 
it,  when  I  try.  What  bank  robbers,  I  ask 
you,  would  undertake  such  an  adventure  at 
half -past  four  in  the  afternoon?  I  cannot  com 
pete  with  the  films.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
vault  stood  locked,  the  tellers  were  gone,  even 
the  office-boy  had  stolen  away,  and  Johnny 
and  I  were  left  alone  together,  exchanging 
rather  feebly,  and  with  increasing  feebleness, 
some  faint  and  unimportant  boyhood  remin- 
l  82  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

iscences.  ...  I  feel  abysmally  abashed;  let 
us  open  a  new  section. 

n 

As  I  have  said,  Raymond  wrote.  He  wrote, 
for  example,  with  a  voluminous  duteousness, 
to  his  parents.  His  letters  to  them,  so  far  as 
they  came  to  my  notice,  were  curious;  prob 
ably  he  meant  that  they  should  be  saved  and 
should  become  a  sort  of  journal  of  his  travels. 
They  were  almost  completely  impersonal. 
There  was  plenty  of  straight  description; 
but  beyond  some  slight  indications  of  his 
own  movements,  past  or  intended,  there 
was  no  narration.  He  never  mentioned  peo 
ple  he  met;  he  never  described  his  adven 
tures  —  if  he  had  any.  He  seemed  to  be 
saying  to  Europe,  as  Rastignac  said  to  Paris, 

V 

"A  nous  deux,  maintenant!"  He  was  at  grips 
with  the  Old  World,  and  that  sufficed. 

His  letters  to  me,  however,  were  not  devoid 
of  personal  reactions.  These  commonly  took 
an  aesthetic  turn.  An  early  letter  from  Rome 
had  a  good  deal  to  say  about  the  Baroque. 
He  met  it  everywhere;  it  was  an  abomina- 
[  83  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

tion;  it  tried  his  soul.  Font  ana  and  Maderna, 
the  Gog  and  Magog  of  architecture,  had 
flanked  the  portals  of  art  and  had  let  through 
a  hideous  throng  of  artificialities  and  corrup 
tions.  .  .  .  The  word  "Baroque"  was  new  to 
me,  and  I  looked  it  up.  I  learned  that  it  de 
scribed,  not  a  current  movement,  as  I  had 
supposed,  but  an  influence  which  had  ex 
hausted  itself  nearly  three  hundred  years  ago. 
But  it  was  still  recent  and  real  to  Raymond. 
And  I  learned,  further,  that  this  style  had 
modern  champions  who  could  say  a  good 
word  for  it.  In  any  event,  it  might  be  accepted 
calmly  as  a  valuable  and  characteristic  link 
in  the  general  historic  chain. 

In  another  letter  he  was  ecstatic  over  the 
Gothic  brickwork  of  Cremona.  It  was  so 
beautiful,  he  said  in  as  many  words,  that  it 
made  his  heart  ache;  not  often  did  Raymond 
let  himself  go  like  that.  Eager  to  follow  his 
track  —  and  to  understand,  if  possible,  his 
heart,  however  peculiar  and  baffling  —  I 
looked  up,  in  turn,  North  Italian  brickwork. 
This  was  twice  three  hundred  year  sold.  But 
it  had  stirred  other  modern  hearts  than  Ray- 
[  84  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

mond's;  for  an  English  aesthete  had  tried 
(and  almost  succeeded)  to  impose  it  on  his 
country  as  a  living  mode.  "Very  well,"  I 
said;  "Italian  brickwork  may  reasonably  be 
accepted  as  a  modern  interest." 

Raymond,  before  descending  to  Italy,  had 
spent  some  months  in  Paris.  Circumstances 
had  enabled  him  to  frequent  a  few  studios, 
and  his  first  letter  to  me  from  that  city  had 
been  rather  technical  and  "viewy."  Inci 
dentally,  he  had  seen  something  of  the  stu 
dents,  and  had  found  little  to  approve,  either 
in  their  manners  or  their  morals.  He  left 
Paris  without  reporting  any  moral  infractions 
of  his  own  and  settled  down  for  some  stay  in 
Florence.  He  was  studying  the  language  fur 
ther,  he  reported :  a  language,  he  said,  which 
was  easy  to  begin,  but  hard  to  continue  — 
the  longer  you  studied  the  less  you  really 
knew.  However,  he  knew  enough  for  daily 
practical  purposes.  His  pension  was  pleasant; 
small,  and  the  few  visitors  were  mostly  Eng 
lish. 

But  there  were  one  or  two  Americans  in 
the  house,  and  they  came  home  a  few  months 
[    85    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

later  with  their  account  of  Raymond  and 
his  ways.  It  was  needed;  for  the  three  or  four 
letters  that  he  had  printed  in  one  of  our  news 
papers  contained  little  beyond  descriptions 
of  set  sights  —  to  think  we  should  have  con 
tinued  to  welcome  that  sort  of  thing  so  long! 
Well,  these  people  reported  him  as  conscien 
tiously  busy,  for  his  hour  each  day,  with 
grammar  and  dictionary.  He  was  also  get 
ting  his  hand  in  painting;  and  he  had  "taken 
on"  musical  composition,  even  to  instrumen 
tation.  "Too  many  irons!"  commented  my 
lively  young  informant.  "And  I  think  I  should 
get  my  painting  in  Paris  and  my  music  in 
Germany."  She  also  said  that  Raymond 
had  next  to  no  social  life — he  showed  hardly 
the  slightest  desire  to  make  acquaintances. 

"An  old  Frenchman  came  to  the  place  for  a 
few  days,"  she  continued;  "and  as  he  was  leav 
ing  he  said  your  friend  was  living  in  an  ivory 
tower  —  the  windows  few,  the  door  narrow, 
and  the  key  thrown  away.  '  Ivory  tower '  — 
do  you  understand  what  that  means?" 

"No,"  I  said.  But  of  course  I  understand 
now. 

[    86    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

HI 

As  a  consequence  of  my  call  at  Johnny 
McComas's  office  (or  as  a  probable  conse 
quence),  I  received,  some  six  months  later, 
an  invitation  to  his  wedding.  You  will  ex 
pect  to  hear  that  I  was  present,  and  perhaps 
acted  as  usher,  or  even  as  best  man.  Nothing 
of  the  sort  was  the  case,  however;  I  was  ab 
sent  at  the  time  in  the  East.  Nor  are  you  to 
imagine  me  as  continually  following,  at  close 
range,  the  vicissitudes,  major  and  minor, 
which  made  up  his  life,  or  made  up  Ray 
mond's.  An  exact,  perpetual  attendance  of 
fifty  years  is  completely  out  of  the  question. 
Don't  expect  it. 

Johnny  married,  I  was  told,  a  young  woman 
living  in  his  own  suburb,  the  daughter  of  a 
manufacturer  of  some  means.  I  met  him 
about  two  months  after  his  great  step.  He 
was  still  full  of  the  new  life,  and  full  of  the 
new  wife. 

"She's  fine!"  he  declared.  "Not  too  fine, 
but  fine  enough  for  me." 

He  cocked  his  hat  to  one  side. 
[    87    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

"Do  you  know,  I  talk  to  her  just  as  I  would 
to  a  man." 

"Johnny I"  I  began,  almost  gasping. 

"Well,  what's  wrong?  Ever  said  anything 
much  out  of  the  way  to  you?  Ever  heard  me 
say  anything  to  any  other  fellow?" 

"Why,  no  ..."  I  was  obliged  to  acknowl 
edge. 

"Then  why  the  row?  It's  all  easy  as  an 
old  shoe.  She  likes  it." 

"I  know.  But  —  talking  with  a  woman 
..  .  It  is  n't  quite  like  .  .  ." 

"Don't  make  any  mistake.  Just  have  the 
big  things  right,  and  they'll  overlook  lots  of 
the  little  ones." 

"H'm,"  I  said  doubtfully.  "I  supposed  it 
was  just  the  other  way.  Lay  a  lot  of  stress 
on  certain  little  things,  and  larger  shortcom 
ings  won't  bother  them.  Bring  her  a  bunch 
of  flowers  to-day,  and  she'll  help  you  deed 
away  the  house  and  lot  to-morrow." 

"Fudge!"  said  Johnny.  "I  mean  the  really 
big  things.  There's  only  two.  Ground  to 
stand  on  and  air  to  breathe." 

"That  is  to  say  .  .  .  ?" 
[    88    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

"A  platform  under  her  feet  and  an  at 
mosphere  about  her.  Well,  she's  got  me  to 
stand  on  and  to  surround  her.  She  under 
stands  it.  She  likes  it.  Nothing  else  matters 
much." 

"Ah!"  said  I. 

"I'm  her  bedrock,  and  I'm  her —  How 
do  they  say  it?  I'm  her  —  envelopment,  as 
those  painting  fellows  put  it." 

"See  here,  Johnny,"  I  protested;  "Don't 
get  anachronistic.  We  are  only  in  1884.  That 
expression  won't  reach  America  for  ten  or 
fifteen  years.  Have  some  regard  for  dates." 

"It  won't?  Was  n't  it  in  your  friend's  let 
ter?" 

"What  friend?" 

"Why,  Prince;  when  he  was  in  Paris.  Did 
n't  you  read  it  to  me?" 

I  remembered. 

"Do  you  know,"  he  went  on,  "I've  been 
straight  as  a  string  —  ever  since.  And  I'm 
going  to  keep  so." 

"I  should  hope  so,  indeed." 

"Whatever  I  may  have  been  before.  But 
I  think  it's  better  for  a  young  fellow  to  dash 
[  89  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

in  and  find  out  than  to  keep  standing  on  the 
edge  and  just  wonder." 

"Well,  I  don't  know,  Johnny,"  I  returned 
soberly.  "I'm  going  to  be  married  myself, 
next  month.  And  I  expect  to  go  to  my  bride 
just  as  pure  —  " 

"No  preaching,"  said  Johnny.  "  The 
slate's  wiped  clean.  Adele's  all  right  for  me, 
and  I'm  all  right  to  her." 

He  adjusted  his  hat,  making  the  two  sides 
of  the  brim  level. 

"We're  going  to  move  shortly,"  he  stated. 
"The  business  can  go  on  where  it  is,  for  a 
while,  but  we  're  going  to  live  somewhere  else." 

Perhaps  in  the  city  itself,  it  appeared;  per 
haps  in  some  suburb  toward  the  north.  But 
no  longer  in  one  to  the  west.  Johnny  was 
developing  some  such  scent  for  social  values 
and  some  such  feeling  for  impending  topo 
graphical  changes  as  had  begun  to  stir  the 
great  houses  that  were  grouped  about  the 
Princes. 

"So  you're  the  next  one?"  he  said  pres 
ently.  "It's  the  only  life.  Good  luck  to  you. 
And  who 's  going  to  see  you  through?  Prince?  " 
I  90  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

"Yes  —  'my  friend.'  I'm  glad  you  re 
member  him." 

"Oh  yes;  I  can  remember  him  when  I 
try.  But  I  don't  try  very  hard  or  very  often. 
Back  in  this  country?" 

"He  is." 

"What's  he  doing?"  Johnny  fixed  his  hard 
blue  eyes  firmly  on  me. 

I  was  sorry  to  have  no  very  definite  an 
swer.  "He  has  been  in  the  East  lately.  He'll 
be  back  here  in  time  for  me." 

"Well,"  said  Johnny  darkly;  and  that  was 
all. 

IV 

Raymond's  "tower"  was  not  static,  but 
peripatetic.  Early  in  his  second  summer 
abroad  it  was  standing  among  the  Dutch 
windmills  for  a  brief  season;  and  when  he 
learned  that  I  was  to  have  a  short  vacation 
in  England  —  the  only  quarter  of  the  Old 
World  I  ever  cared  for  —  he  left  it  altogether 
for  a  fortnight  and  came  across  from  Flush 
ing  to  see  me. 

Two  points  immediately  made  themselves 
[  91  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

clear.  Firstly,  he  was  viewing  the  world 
through  literature  —  through  works  of  fic 
tion  in  some  cases,  through  guidebooks  in 
more.  Everything  was  a  spectacle,  with  him 
self  quite  outside  as  an  onlooker;  and  nothing 
was  a  spectacle  until  it  had  been  ranged  and 
appraised  in  print.  Secondly,  if  he  was  out 
side  of  things,  America  was  still  farther  out 
side;  it  existed  as  a  remote  province  not  yet 
drawn  into  the  activities  and  interests  of  the 
"world."  He  seemed  willing,  even  anxious, 
to  make  himself  secondary,  subordinate. 
However  he  may  have  been  on  the  Conti 
nent,  here  in  England  his  desire  to  conform 
made  him  appear  subservient  and  almost 
abject.  My  own  unabashed  and  unconscious 
Americanism  —  the  possible  consequence  of 
inexperience  —  sometimes  embarrassed  him, 
and  he  occasionally  undertook  to  edit  my 
dealings  with  members  of  the  older  half  of 
our  race,  even  with  waiters  and  cabmen.  As 
for  the  more  boastful,  aggressive,  self-asser 
tive  sort  of  Americanism,  that  would  make 
him  tremble  with  anger  and  blush  for  shame. 
I  will  say  this  in  his  behalf,  however:  he 
[  92  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

did  not  like  England  and  was  not  at  home 
there. 

"The  little  differences,"  he  observed,  one 
day,  "made  more  trouble  than  the  big  ones. 
A  minor  seventh  is  all  right,  while  a  minor 
second  is  distressing.  I  am  happier  among 
the  Latins." 

Yet  I  am  sure  that  even  among  his  Latins 
he  took  the  purely  objective  view  and  valued 
their  objects  of  interest  according  as  they 
were  starred  and  double-starred,  or  left  un 
marked  in  the  comparative  neglect  of  small 
print. 

We  saw  together  Canterbury  and  Cam 
bridge  and  Brighton  and  a  few  other  ap 
proved  places.  Through  all  these  he  walked 
with  a  meticulous  circumspection,  wonder 
ing  what  people  thought,  asking  inwardly 
if  he  were  squaring  with  their  ideas  of  what 
conduct  should  be.  Only  once  did  I  find 
him  fully  competent  and  sufficiently  asser 
tive.  The  incident  occurred  on  a  late  after 
noon,  in  a  small  side  street  just  off  the  Strand, 
while  I  was  casting  about  for  one  of  those 
letter-pillars.  Raymond  was  approached, 
[  93  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

as  was  proper  to  the  locality  and  the  time  of 
day,  by  a  young  woman  of  thirty  who  had  a 
hard,  determined  face  and  who  was  clothed 
on  with  a  rustling  black  dress  that  jingled 
with  jet.  I  was  near  enough  to  hear. 

"Good-afternoon,"  she  said. 

"Good-afternoon." 

"Where,"  with  marked  expressiveness, 
"are  you  going?" 

"I'm  going  to  stand  right  here." 

"Give  me  a  drink." 

"Could  n't  think  of  it." 

"Stand,"  she  said,  with  sudden  vicious- 
ness,  "stand  and  rot!" 

Raymond,  after  an  instant's  surprise,  made 
a  response  in  his  unstudied  vernacular.  "Yes, 
I'll  stand;  but  you  skip.  Shoo!" 

She  was  preparing  some  retort,  but  he 
waved  both  his  hands,  wide  out,  as  if  start 
ing  a  ruffled,  vindictive  hen  across  a  high 
way.  At  the  same  time  he  caught  sight  of  a 
constable  on  the  corner,  and  let  her  see  that 
he  saw  — 

"Constable!" — why,  I  am  as  bad  as  Ray 
mond  himself:  I  mean,  of  course,  policeman. 
[    94    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

But  the  London  police  are  sometimes  chary 
in  the  exercise  of  their  functions.  What 
really  started  the  woman  on  her  way  was  his 
next  brief  remark,  accompanied  by  the  hands, 
as  before,  though  with  a  more  decided  shade 
of  propulsion. 

"Scoot!"  She  went,  without  words. 

These  were  the  only  American  observa 
tions  I  heard  from  Raymond  during  that 
fortnight. 

I  wish  he  had  been  as  successful  on  the 
night  of  our  arrival  in  London  when  we  en 
countered,  in  the  court  behind  the  big  gilded 
grille  of  the  Grand  Metropole,  the  porter 
of  that  grandiose  establishment.  We  had 
come  together  from  Harwich  and  did  not 
reach  this  hotel  until  half  an  hour  before  mid 
night.  We  had  had  our  things  put  on  the 
pavement  and  had  dismissed  the  cab,  and 
the  porter,  with  an  airy,  tentative  insolence, 
now  reported  the  place  full. 

"/  don't  know  who  ordered  your  luggage 
down,  sir;  /  did  n't,"  he  said  with  a  smile 
that  was  an  experiment  in  disrespect. 

Raymond  looked  as  if  he  were  for  mime- 
[  95  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

diately  adjusting  himself  to  this  —  though 
I  could  hardly  imagine  his  ever  having  done 
the  like  in  Paris  or  in  Florence.  He  was  quite 
willing  to  confess  himself  in  the  wrong:  yes, 
he  ought  to  have  remembered  that  the  "sea 
son"  was  beginning;  he  ought  to  have  known 
that  this  particular  season,  though  young, 
had  set  in  with  uncommon  vigor;  he  ought 
to  have  known  that  all  the  hotels,  even  the 
largest,  were  likely  to  be  crowded  and  have 
sent  on  a  wire.  The  porter,  emboldened  by 
the  departure  of  the  cab,  and  by  my  com 
panion's  contrite  silence,  began  to  embroider 
the  theme. 

Now  a  single  week  in  England  had  taught 
me  that  no  two  men  in  that  country  —  the 
home  of  political  but  not  of  social  democracy 
( —  are  likely  to  talk  long  on  even  terms.  One 
man  must  almost  necessarily  take  the  upper 
hand  and  leave  to  the  other  the  lower,  and 
the  relation  must  be  reached  early.  I  re 
solved  on  the  upper  —  cab  or  no  cab.  I  glared 
• —  as  well  and  as  coldly  as  I  could.  The  fel 
low  was  only  a  year  or  so  older  than  I. 

"You  are  too  chatty,"  I  said.  "Fewer 
[  96  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

words  and  more  action.  If  you  are  full,  call 
somebody  to  take  us  and  our  baggage  to  some 
hotel  near  by  that  is  not  full." 

The  fellow  sobered  down  and  gave  us  his 
first  look  resembling  respect. 

"Very  good,  sir.  I  will,  sir.  Thank  you, 
sir,"  —  though  he  had  nothing  to  thank  me 
for,  and  though  he  well  knew  there  was  to 
be  nothing. 

Raymond  looked  at  me  as  one  looks  at  a 
friend  who  surprises  by  the  sudden  disclo 
sure  of  some  unexpected  talent  or  power. 

"But  you  said  'baggage,'  "  he  commented. 
/'Indeed  I  did,"  said  I. 


Our  new  hotel,  we  discovered  next  morn 
ing,  was  duplicated  in  name  by  another,  four 
doors  down  the  street.  During  the  day  we 
heard  the  reason  for  this.  A  domestic  diffi 
culty  had  overtaken  husband  and  wife  and 
the  two  had  separated,  each  keeping  an  in 
terest  in  the  serviceable  name  and  a  frontage 
on  the  familiar  street.  We  were  in  the  hus 
band's  hotel,  under  the  very  discreet  minis- 
[  97  ] 


ON  THE  STAIKS 

trations  of  the  young  woman  who  had  caused 
the  break.  "Do  you  quite  like  this?"  Ray 
mond  had  asked  me.  But  he  became  reas 
sured  on  seeing  in  the  guest-book  the  names 
of  two  or  three  well-known  and  sufficiently 
respected  compatriots.  By  the  next  day  he 
was  able  to  cast  on  Miss  Brough,  as  she 
flitted  (still  discreetly)  through  her  functions, 
the  eye  of  a  qualified  idealization.  I  am 
sure  he  would  never  have  viewed  indulgently 
any  such  situation  at  home.  But  the  poor, 
patient,  cautious  girl  helped  him  toward  real 
izing  the  sophistications  and  corruptions  of 
European  society,  and  so  he  welcomed  her. 
But  I  believe  he  avoided  speaking  to  her. 
She  may  have  been  hurt,  or  she  may  have 
been  amused;  or  neither.  Yet,  after  all,  this 
contretemps  was  for  him,  I  felt,  but  a  prosaic 
substitute  for  something  richer.  A  similar 
situation  in  Naples,  say,  taken  at  close  range, 
might  have  quickened  his  interest  consid 
erably. 

Next  day  there  was  something  different 
for  him  to  report.  He  had  gone  into  a  court 
yard  off  Holborn,  drawn  by  the  sound  of  a 
[    98    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

hurdy-gurdy.  Four  or  five  little  girls  were 
dancing,  and  some  older  women  stood  look 
ing  on.  For  a  few  moments  he  looked  on 
too,  probably  with  an  effect  of  aloof  and 
amused  patronage.  But  patronage  was  not 
for  that  court. 

Presently  one  of  the  younger  women,  who 
wore  a  hat  full  of  messy  plumes  and  carried 
a  small  fish  in  each  hand  by  the  tail,  stepped 
up  and  invited  him  to  trip  a  measure  with 
her.  "Trip  a  measure"  —  it  has  a  fine  Eliza 
bethan  or  Jacobean  sound,  whether  she  used 
the  precise  expression  or  not.  But  Raymond 
demurred;  at  first  politely;  later,  perhaps  not 
so  politely.  But  he  was  whisked  into  the 
dance  and  made  to  take  several  turns.  He 
was  so  embarrassed  that  he  called  it  all  an 
"  adventure."  Possibly  it  was  meant  forv  a 
lesson  in  manners. 

Thus  Raymond  in  England.  As  he  said, 
he  liked  the  Continent  better.  I  hope  he 
showed  to  better  advantage  there,  and  I 
should  have  liked  to  see  him  there  —  to  be 
with  him  there.  For  he  rather  put  a  brake 
on  any  measure  of  exuberance  and  momen- 
[  99  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

turn  which  I  might  have  brought  to  England 
with  me,  and  I  could  only  trust  that  his 
strait-jacket  was  partly  unlaced  among  the 
French  and  Italians.  I  think  that  likely,  for 
with  them  he  was,  of  course,  an  acknowledged 
and  unmistakable  foreigner.  But  my  fort 
night  with  him  was  cramped  and  uncomfort 
able;  and  when  we  parted  at  the  American 
Exchange  —  I  for  Liverpool  and  he  for 
Calais  —  I  confess  I  had  a  slight  feeling  of 
relief.  I  felt,  too,  that  my  conduct,  however 
native  and  unstudied,  had  pleased  the  Island 
quite  as  well  as  his. 

At  the  Exchange  itself  he  never  read  Ameri 
can  newspapers  —  least  of  all,  one  from  his 
own  town.  I  believe,  too,  he  avoided  them 
on  the  Continent.  Living  a  very  special  life, 
he  meant  to  keep  himself  integral,  uncon- 
taminate.  And  behind  us  both  was  the  other 
world,  his  own,  all  vital  and  astir. 

Yes,  I  am  aware  that  my  prose  is  pedes 
trian,  and  that  Europe  —  as  it  once  was,  to 
us  —  deserves  a  brighter  and  higher  note.  I 
will  attempt,  just  here,  a  purple  patch. 

Europe,  then, — the  beacon,  hope,  and 
[  100  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

cynosure  of  our  fresh,  ingenuous  youth — • 
the  glamorous  realm  afar  which  drew  to  itself 
from  across  the  sea  our  eager  artist-bands, 
pilgrims  to  the  Old,  the  Stately,  and  the  Fair; 
Europe,  which  reared  above  our  dull  horizon 
the  towers  of  Oxford  and  of  Notre  Dame,  sent 
up  into  our  pale,  empty  sky  the  shimmer 
ing  mirage  of  Venice,  and  cast  across  our 
workaday  way  the  grave  and  noble  shadow 
of  Rome;  Europe,  which  gave  out  through 
the  varying  voices  of  Correggio,  Canova, 
Hugo,  and  Wagner  the  cry,  so  lofty  and  so 
piercing-sweet,  of  Art;  Europe,  which  with 
titles  and  insignia  and  social  grandeurs,  once 
dazzled  and  bemused  our  inexperienced  senses 
.  .  .  and  so  on. 

Easy! 

But  worth  while? 

I  shall  not  attempt  to  decide. 

To-day  Europe  seems  not  all  we  once  found 
it;  and  we,  on  the  other  hand,  have  come  to  be 
more  than  some  of  us  at  least  once  figured  our 
selves.  We  are  beginning  to  have  glamours 
and  importances  of  our  own. 

[  101   ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

VI 

Raymond  lingered  on  for  a  year  or  more  in 
Italy,  and  came  home,  as  I  have  implied,  in 
time  for  my  wedding.  He  found  his  native 
city  more  uncouth  and  unkempt  than  ever. 
Such  it  was,  absolutely;  and  such  it  was,  rel 
atively,  after  his  years  under  a  more  careful 
and  self-respecting  regime.  The  population 
was  still  advancing  by  leaps  and  bounds,  and 
hopeful  spirits  had  formed  a  One-Million 
Club.  A  few  others,  even  more  ardent,  said 
that  the  population  was  already  a  million,  or 
close  upon  it,  and  busied  themselves  to  start 
a  Two-Million  Club.  They  had  their  eyes 
wide  open  to  the  advantage  of  numbers,  and 
tightly  closed  to  the  palpable  fact  that  the 
community  was  unable  properly  to  house  and 
administer  the  numbers  it  already  had.  The 
city  seemed  to  cry:  "I  need  a  friendly  moni 
tor  —  one  who  will  point  me  out  the  decen 
cies  and  compel  me  to  adopt  them."  The 
demagogue  who  had  ruled  and  misruled  be 
fore  had  been  reflected  once  or  twice,  and  the 
newspapers  were  still  indulging  their  familiar 
I  102  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

strain  of  irresponsible  and  ineffective  criti 
cism.  The  dark  world  behind  him  had  be 
come  more  populous  and  bold,  and  the  forces 
for  good  still  seemed  unable  to  organize  and 
cooperate  toward  making  betterment  an 
actuality.  But  new  people  were  always  flock 
ing  in  —  people  from  the  farms,  villages  and 
country-towns  of  the  Middle  region  —  and 
bringing  with  them  the  uncontaminated  rustic 
ideals  of  Tightness  and  decorum :  a  clean  stream 
pouring  into  a  turbid  pool,  and  the  time  was 
to  come  when  it  would  make  itself  felt.  Mean 
while,  the  city  remained  —  to  Raymond  — 
a  gross,  sharp  village,  one  full  of  folk  who, 
whether  from  the  Middle  West  or  from  Mid 
dle  Europe,  had  never  come  within  ten  leagues 
of  gentility,  and  who,  one  and  all,  were  ab- 
sorbedly  and  unabashedly  bent  on  the  object 
which  had  suddenly  assembled  them  at  this 
one  favored  spot  —  the  pushing  of  their  in 
dividual  fortunes.  A  hauptstadt-to-be,  per 
haps;  but,  so  far,  an  immensely  inchoate  and 
repellent  miscellany. 

Raymond's  father  gave  him  a  sober  wel 
come.    His  mother  attempted  a  brief,  spas- 
[    103    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

modic  display  of  affection;  but  it  was  too 
much,  and  only  a  maid  and  her  pillows  saw 
her  for  the  next  few  days.  His  father  seemed 
older,  much  older;  tired,  careworn,  worried. 
The  trouble  of  settling  old  Jehiel's  estate 
had  been  all  that  could  have  been  expected, 
and  more.  There  were  claims,  complications, 
lawsuits,  what  not;  and  through  all  this  maze 
James  Prince  had  to  put  up  with  the  inherited 
help  of  the  dry,  dismal  old  fellow  whom  I  had 
seen  in  earlier  days  at  the  house.  I  had  come, 
now,  to  a  better  professional  knowledge  of 
him.  He  was  a  man  of  probity,  and  of  some 
ability,  but  a  deliberate;  impossible  to  hurry, 
and  not  easy,  as  it  seemed,  even  to  interest. 
Under  him  matters  dragged  dully  through 
the  courts,  and  others'  nerves  were  worn  to 
shreds.  I  remember  how  surprised  I  was  one 
day  on  hearing  that  he  had  picked  up  enough 
resolution  to  die. 

Raymond  did  not  much  concern  himself 
about  his  father's  burdens.  He  assumed,  I 
suppose,  that  such  taxes  on  a  man's  brain 
and  general  vitality  were  proper  enough  to 
middle  age  and  to  the  business  life  of  a  large 
[  104  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

city.  However,  he  was  living — just  as  he  had 
principally  lived  abroad  —  on  his  father's 
bounty.  His  contributions  to  the  press — • 
whether  a  daily,  or,  of  late,  a  monthly  — 
brought  in  no  significant  sums;  and  a  bequest 
of  some  size  from  his  grandfather  was  slow 
in  finding  its  way  into  his  hands. 

As  I  have  said,  Raymond  might  have  taken 
an  advantageous  position  in  home  society. 
He  made  no  effort,  and  I  sometimes  caught 
myself  wondering  if  his  attitude  might  be  that 
there  was  "nobody  here."  He  might  have 
joined  his  father's  club;  but  the  older  men 
principally  played  billiards  and  talked  their 
business  affairs  between.  However,  he  did 
not  care  for  billiards,  nor  had  their  affairs  any 
affinity  with  his.  A  younger  set  —  noisy  and 
assertive  out  of  proportion  to  its  numbers  — 
gave  him  no  consolation,  still  less  anything 
like  edification.  They  were  au  premier  plan; 
they  possessed  no  background;  they  were 
without  atmosphere  —  without  envelopment, 
as  Johnny  McComas  might  have  amended  it 
(though  no  such  lack  would  have  been  noted 
or  resented  by  Johnny  himself).  Bref,  he 
[  105  J 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

knew  what  they  all  were  without  going  to 
see.  And  as  for  "society,"  it  rustled  flimsily, 
like  tissue-paper;  bright,  in  a  way,  but  still 
thin  and  crackling. 

I  wonder  how  he  found  such  society  as 
attended  my  wedding.  I  shall  not  describe 
it ;  I  did  not  describe  Johnny's  —  probably 
the  more  important  event  of  the  two  for 
the  purposes  of  this  calm  narrative.  Yet,  if 
you  will  permit  me,  I  shall  touch  on  two 
points. 

I  wish,  first,  to  say  that,  in  my  ears  and  to 
my  eyes,  the  name  "  Elsie"  is  just  as  dear  and 
charming  as  it  ever  was.  Perhaps,  at  one 
period  of  my  courtship,  I  wondered  if  the 
name  would  wear.  No  name  more  delightful 
and  suitable  for  a  gay,  arch,  sweet  young  girl 
of  twenty;  but  how,  I  asked  myself,  will  the 
name  sit  on  a  woman  of  forty,  or  on  one  of 
sixty?  Well,  I  will  confess  that,  at  forty,  a 
certain  strain  of  incongruity  appeared;  but 
it  marvelously  vanished  during  the  following 
score  of  years,  and  the  name  now  seems  ut 
terly  right  for  the  dainty  figure  and  gentle 
face  of  my  lifelong  companion.  And  though 
it  106  I 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

our  eldest  daughter  is  unmarried  and  thirty- 
five,  we  have  never  regretted  passing  on 
this  beautiful  name  to  her. 

My  second  point  must  deal  with  Ray 
mond's  attitude  toward  me  on  my  wedding- 
day  and  on  the  days  preceding  it.  He  was 
stiff,  constrained,  dissatisfied  —  merely  court 
eous  toward  my  Elsie,  and  not  at  all  cordial  to 
me.  I  wondered  whether  he  blamed  me  for 
thus  bringing  him  back  home;  but  the  real 
reason,  as  I  came  to  understand  later,  was 
quite  different.  He  regarded  the  marriage  of 
a  friend  as  a  personal  deprivation,  and  the 
bride  as  the  chief  figure  in  the  conspiracy. 
After  my  defection,  or  misappropriation,  he 
solaced  himself  by  trying  to  make  one  or 
two  other  friendships.  When  these  friends 
married  in  turn,  like  process  produced  like 
results.  These  men,  however,  he  threw  over 
board  completely;  in  my  case,  he  showed, 
after  a  while,  some  relenting,  and  ultimately 
even  forgiveness.  By  the  time  he  came  to 
marry  on  his  own  account,  the  last  of  his  very 
few  bachelor  friends  had  "gone  off";  so  there 
was  no  chance  of  inflicting  on  anybody  that 
[  107  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

displeasure  which  others  had  several  times 
inflicted  on  him. 

He  sent  Elsie  a  suitable  present,  and  stood 
beside  me  through  the  ceremony  as  graciously 
as  he  was  able. 

"  I  wish  you  both  great  joy,"  he  said  firmly, 
at  the  end;  and  it  was  six  weeks  before  we 
saw  him  in  our  little  home. 


PART  IV 
I 

JOHNNY  McCoMAS  was  still  carrying  on  his 
business  life  and  his  home  life  in  the  suburb 
where  he  had  married,  when  I  came,  finally, 
to  make  my  first  call  on  the  domestic  group 
of  which  he  was  the  nub.  Still  in  the  fu 
ture  was  the  day  when  he  was  to  move  into 
town,  and  to  have  also  a  summer  home  on 
the  North  Shore,  and  to  make  some  of  his 
father-in-law's  spare  funds  yield  profitable  re 
sults,  and  to  arouse  among  wistful  clerks  and 
unsuccessful  "operators'*  an  admiring  won 
der  as  the  youngest  bank-president  in  the 
"Loop." 

I  looked  in  on  him  one  evening  in  late 
November.  I  found  a  house  too  emphatically 
furnished  and  a  wife  too  concerned  about 
making  an  impression.  I  did  not  consider 
myself  a  young  man  of  prime  consequence 
and  did  not  relish  the  expenditure  of  so  much 
effort:  after  all,  Johnny's  standing,  Johnny's 
[  109  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

wife,  Johnny's  domestic  entourage  were  not 
before  a  judgment-bar.  It  was  plain  to  see 
that  for  Mrs.  John  W.  McComas  complete 
social  comfort  had  not  yet  been  reached,  and 
I  wondered  if  the  next  move  might  not  show 
it  as  farther  away  than  ever. 

Johnny  himself  was  bluff  and  direct,  and 
took  things  as  a  matter  of  course.  Much  had 
been  done,  but  more  remained  to  be  done; 
meanwhile  all  was  well  and  good.  After  a 
little,  his  wife  was  content  to  leave  us  alone 
together,  and  we  drifted  to  Johnny's  "den" 
—  a  word  new  at  that  time,  and  descriptive 
of  the  only  feature  of  his  home  on  which  he 
laid  the  slightest  self-conscious  emphasis. 

I  had  heard  that  there  were  twins  —  boys; 
and  soon,  as  the  evening  was  still  young, 
I  heard  the  twins  themselves.  They  had 
reached  the  age  of  ten  months,  and  conse 
quently  had  developed  wants,  but  no  artic 
ulate  means  for  making  those  wants  known. 
Therefore  they  howled,  and  they  began 
howling  in  unison  now.  Perhaps  it  was  for 
them  that  a  foresighted  mother  had  left  us 
alone  together. 

[  no  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

"Great  little  hollerers!"  said  Johnny  plac 
idly,  pulling  at  his  pipe.  - 

I  was  still  a  bachelor.  "Might  shut  the 
door?"  I  proposed. 

"If  you  like,"  said  Johnny,  without  en 
thusiasm.  "They  wake  me  every  morning  at 
five,"  he  added. 

Yes,  I  was  still  a  bachelor  —  and  probably 
a  tactless,  even  a  brutal,  one. 

"Might  move  them  to  another  bedroom, 
farther  away?"  I  suggested.  The  house 
seemed  big  enough  for  such  an  arrangement. 

"Don't  want  to,"  declared  Johnny.  He 
began  pulling  at  his  pipe  again,  and  there  was 
a  little  silence  during  which  I  might  meditate 
on  the  curt  nobility  of  his  remark. 

The  fact  was,  of  course,  that  Johnny  loved 
life;  he  embraced  it  with  gusto,  with  both 
arms  outspread.  No  sidestepping  its  ad 
vances;  no  dodging  its  sharp  angles;  no 
feeble  mitigating  of  a  situation  for  which  he 
was  himself  responsible;  no  paltry  deadening 
of  domestic  uproar  merely  because  he  himself 
happened  to  be  within  the  domestic  environ 
ment.  "If  Adele  stands  it,  I  will  too  — 

[    HI    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

they're  mine  as  well  as  hers,"  —  such  I  con 
ceive  to  have  been  his  attitude.  Johnny  had 
no  nerves,  and  only  a  minimum  of  sensibility. 
The  sound-waves  broke  on  his  sensorium  as 
ripples  break  on  a  granite  coast.  Perhaps 
they  pleased  him;  perhaps  they  even  soothed 
him.  Why,  bless  you!  these  children  were 
his!  They  were  facts  as  great  and  as  unes- 
capable  as  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the  tides,  as 
dawn  and  twilight,  as  the  morning  and  eve 
ning  stars.  And  the  evening  stars  were  singing 
together.  Great  may  have  been  the  jubilation 
for  Johnny's  ears,  boundless  the  content  in 
Johnny's  heart. 

I  really  think  that  Johnny  felt  through  the 
din  some  of  the  exhilaration  that  often  came 
to  him  with  a  good  brisk  scrap  in  his  office  — 
or  in  the  other  man's  office.  In  fact,  home  and 
business  were  Johnny's  two  sources  of  interest 
and  pleasure  —  the  warp  and  woof  of  his  life 
—  and  he  was  determined  on  getting  the  ut 
most  out  of  each.  His  interest  in  his  home 
circle  may  somewhat  have  declined  —  or  at 
least  have  moderated  —  with  advancing  years, 
but  it  was  incandescent  now.  His  interest  in 

t 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

the  outside  world  —  that  oyster-bin  await 
ing  his  knife  —  never  slackened,  not  even 
when  the  futility  of  piling  up  the  empty  shells 
became  daylight-clear,  and  when  higher 
things  strove  perseveringly,  even  unmistak 
ably,  to  beckon  him  on.  Never,  in  fact, 
throughout  his  life  did  he  exhibit  more  than 
two  essential  concerns :  one  for  his  family  and 
clan;  and  one  for  the  great  outside  mass  of 
mediocre  individuals  through  whose  inepti 
tudes  he  justly  expected  to  profit. 

Well,  the  door  of  the  den  remained  open, 
and  our  talk  went  on  to  the  rising  and  falling 
of  infant  voices.  At  last,  thinking  that  my 
good-bye  must  be  to  Johnny  only,  I  rose  to  go. 
You  might  reasonably  ask  for  a  clearer  im 
pression  of  his  home  and  a  more  definite  ac 
count  of  his  wife.  But  what  can  I  say  when  the 
primary  address  was  so  disconcertingly  to  the 
ear?  Of  his  wife  —  who  came  down,  during 
a  lull,  at  the  last  moment  —  I  can  only  say 
that  she  seemed  too  empressee  at  the  begin 
ning  and  too  casual  at  the  end.  Perhaps  she 
had  decided  that,  after  all,  I  was  no  more 
than  I  myself  claimed  to  be.  Perhaps  the 
[  113  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

infant  hurricane  was  still  ruffling  the  surface 
of  her  mind,  or  even  disturbing  its  depths. 

"I  won't  ask  you  to  call  again,"  she  said, 
as  we  shook  hands  for  a  good-night:  "we 
shall  be  moving  in  the  spring."  She  spoke 
with  a  satisfied  air  of  self -recognized  finesse, 
and  as  in  the  confident  hope  of  completing 
very  promptly  some  well-planned  little  pro 
gramme;  but  — 

"Visit  us  there,"  said  Johnny,  with  a  quick 
cordiality  which  prevented  his  wife  from  re 
deeming  herself .  -!•  i 

"There"  had  been  the  chief  topic  in  the 
den.  Many  neighborhoods  had  been  brought 
forward,  with  their  attendant  advantages 
and  disadvantages.  Johnny  told  me  what 
he  thought,  and  let  me  say  what  I  thought. 
When  I  listened,  it  was  as  a  man  who  might 
soon  have  a  similar  problem  to  consider. 
When  I  spoke  it  was  to  utter  banalities  se 
dately;  any  neighborhood  might  do,  I  said, 
that  had  good  air;  yes,  and  good  schools  — 
looking  toward  the  future.  And  any  house, 
I  felt,  would  serve,  if  it  had  a  nursery  that 
was  sealed,  sound  proof,  remote  ... 
f  114  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

"Well,  best  luck  in  your  search  for  your 
roof-tree,"  I  said  earnestly  to  them  both. 

"  'Roof-tree'!"  echoed  Johnny.  And,  in 
fact,  my  observation  did  seem  rather  arti 
ficial  and  insincere. 

n 

By  the  time  Raymond  reached  home, 
Johnny  McComas  had  turned  his  informal 
suburban  enterprise  into  a  "state"  bank, 
with  his  father-in-law  as  president  and  him 
self  as  cashier.  The  father-in-law  lent  his 
name  and  furnished  most  of  the  capital; 
Johnny  himself  provided  the  driving  power. 
And  by  the  time  Raymond  had  become, 
through  his  father's  death,  the  head  of  the 
family  and  the  controller  of  the  family  funds, 
Johnny  had  turned  his  state  bank  into  a 
national  bank,  with  its  offices  in  the  city 
and  with  himself  as  president;  and  he  had 
bought  —  at  a  bargain  —  a  satisfactory  house 
on  the  edge  of  the  neighborhood  where 
we  first  met  him.  The  street  was  marked 
for  business  advance  more  promptly  and 
more  unmistakably  than  the  precise  quarter 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

of  the  Princes.  It  would  do  as  a  home  for  a 
few  years.  The  transaction  appealed  both 
to  McComas's  thrift  and  his  pride.  The 
coming  of  his  new  little  bank,  with  its  mod 
est  capital,  made  no  particular  stir  in  the 
"street";  and  the  great  group  of  houses  to 
the  eastward  were  so  apprehensive  of  open 
outrage,  in  one  form  or  another,  that  his 
approach,  in  a  guise  still  social,  provoked  but 
scant  concern. 

James  Prince  died  when  Raymond  was 
about  thirty.  A  careful,  plodding  man  who 
had  never  brought  any  direct  difficulties  upon 
himself,  but  who  had  been  worried  —  and 
worried  out  —  through  troubles  left  him 
by  others.  On  the  whole,  he  had  found  life 
an  unrewarding  thing;  and  he  passed  along, 
at  fifty-five,  with  no  great  regrets.  The  tangle 
of  family  affairs  had  finally  been  straightened 
out  in  considerable  measure,  though  Ray 
mond  found  enough  detail  still  left  to  make 
him  realize  what  a  five  years  his  father  had 
passed  through;  and  when,  the  year  follow 
ing,  his  mother  died,  with  the  settlement  of 
her  estate  almost  overlapping  the  settlement 
[  H6  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

of  his  father's,  he  acquired  a  new  sense  of  the 
grinding,  taxing  possibilities  of  business.  I 
speak  from  his  own  viewpoint;  he  was  sus 
ceptible  —  unduly,  abnormally  so  —  to  the 
grind  and  the  tax.  After  a  few  months  of 
clammy  old  Brand  and  his  methods,  he  sud 
denly  cut  loose  from  him  (without  waiting 
for  him  to  die,  as  he  did  a  little  later);  and 
he  told  me  that  I  was  the  man  to  wind  up 
these  tedious  affairs.  They  were  not  nearly 
so  difficult  and  complicated  as  they  seemed 
to  him  —  they  were  now  largely  routine 
matters,  in  fact;  and  I  hope  I  carried  things 
along  at  a  tempo  which  satisfied  him.  This 
is  not  to  deny  that  Raymond  seemed  to  have 
days  when  he  found  even  me  dilatory  and 
exasperating;  but  old  Brand  would  probably 
have  driven  him  mad. 

Well,  the  prospects  of  his  estate  were  not 
too  brilliant.  The  lawsuits  had  been  expen 
sive  and  sometimes  unsuccessful;  the  bank 
had  passed  a  dividend,  and  the  old  houses, 
which  had  meant  a  lot  of  money  in  their  day, 
meant  less  now  and  even  loss  in  a  near 
future.  The  time  was  fast  coming  when  this 
[  117  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

circumscribed  and  unprotected  neighbor 
hood  was  to  admit  other  —  and  prejudicial 
—  interests:  boarding-houses,  of  course;  and 
refined  homes  for  inebriates;  and  correspond 
ence-schools  for  engineers;  and  one  of  the 
Prince  houses  became  eventually  the  seat 
of  a  publishing-firm  which  needed  a  little 
distinction  more  than  it  needed  a  wide  spread 
of  glass  close  to  the  sidewalk. 

Whatever  the  state  of  Raymond's  for 
tunes,  it  was  easy  to  see  that  they  were  not 
likely  to  improve  in  his  hands.  He  detested 
business,  both  en  gros  and  en  detail.  Despite 
his  ancestry,  he  seemed  to  have  been  born 
with  no  faculty  for  money-making,  and  he 
never  tried  to  make  up  his  deficiency.  It 
was  all  of  a  piece  with  the  stone-throwing 
of  his  boyhood  days  —  he  never  attempted 
to  improve  himself:  it  was  enough  to  follow 
the  gifts  with  which  he  had  been  natively 
endowed.  Precept,  example,  opportunity  — 
all  these  went  for  naught.  To  the  end  of 
his  days  he  viewed  the  American  "business 
man"  as  a  portentous  and  inexplicable  phe 
nomenon  —  one  to  be  regarded  with  dis- 
[  H8  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

taste  and  wonder.  He  persisted  in  thinking 
of  the  type  as  a  juvenile  one  —  an  energetic 
and  clever  boy,  who  was  immensely  active 
and  immensely  productive  of  results  (in  an 
immensely  limited  field),  but  who  was  in 
capable  of  anything  like  an  apergu  or  a  Welt- 
anschauung  (oh,  he  had  plenty  of  words  for 
it!),  and  who  was  essentially  booked  to  lose 
much  more  than  he  gained.  He  disliked 
"offices"  and  abominated  "hours."  I  think 
that  even  my  own  modest  professional  applica 
tions  sometimes  became  a  puzzle  to  him.  .  .  . 

And  here  I  stand  —  convicted  of  having 
perpetrated  another  section  without  one 
short  paragraph  and  without  a  single  line  of 
conversation.  Let  me  hasten  to  bring  Ray 
mond  to  my  suite  and  my  desk-side,  and 
make  him  speak. 

He  came  down  one  morning,  as  adminis 
trator  of  his  mother's  estate,  to  consider  the 
appraisal  of  the  personal  property  —  many 
familiar  items,  and  some  discouraging  ones. 

"Do  you  have  to  do  this?"  he  asked  me, 
with  the  paper  in  his  hand.  "Do  you  like 
to  do  it?" 

I    119    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

"The  world's  work,"  I  rejoined  temper 
ately.  "It's  got  to  be  done." 

"H'm!"  tie  returned.  "The  world's  a 
varied  place.  And  its  work  is  varied  too. 
This  blessed  town  must  be  taught  that." 

Was  he  girding  himself  to  be  one  of  its 
teachers? 

From  that  time  on  I  resolved  to  take  him 
patiently  and  good-humoredly :  a  friend  must 
bear  a  friend's  infirmities. 

Ill 

I  did  not  know,  with  precision,  what 
phases  of  the  world's  work  were  engaging 
Raymond's  attention.  I  suppose  he  was 
adventuring,  rather  vaguely,  among  the 
"liberal  arts,"  though  he  probably  saw,  by 
this  time,  that  a  full  professional  exercise 
of  any  of  them  was  beyond  his  reach.  He 
was  heard  of  as  writing  short  essays  and 
reviews  for  one  or  two  genteel  publications, 
as  making  water-color  tours  through  the 
none  too  alluring  suburbs,  as  composing 
minor  pieces  for  a  little  musical  society 
which  he  had  joined  and  which  he  wished 
[  120  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

to  advance,  and  so  on.  Acquaintances  re 
ported  him  at  architectural  exhibits  and  at 
book-auctions  —  occasions  neither  numer 
ous  nor  important.  He  lived  on  alone  in 
his  father's  house  —  expensively;  too  ex 
pensively,  of  course,  for  it  was  an  exacting 
place  to  keep  up. 

He  was  coming  to  be  known  in  a  small 
circle  —  but  an  influential  one  —  as  a  young 
man  of  wealth,  culture,  and  good-will.  But 
his  wealth  was  less  than  supposed,  his  cul 
ture  was  self-centred,  and  his  good-will 
was  neither  broad  nor  zealous. 

However,  the  new  day  was  coming  when 
he  could  be  turned  to  account  —  or  when, 
at  least,  people  made  the  attempt. 

This,  however,  does  not  mean  philanthropy. 
That  was  barely  dawning  as  a  social  neces 
sity.  The  few  who  were  supporting  chari 
table  institutions  and  were  working  in  the 
recently  evolved  slums  were  neither  con 
spicuous  nor  fashionable.  Nor  does  it  mean 
political  betterment.  No  efforts  had  yet  been 
successful  in  substituting  for  the  city's  execu 
tive  incubus  a  man  of  worthier  type,  nor 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

was  there  yet  any  effective  organization 
founded  on  the  assumption  —  which  would 
have  seemed  remote  and  fantastic  indeed 
—  that  a  city  council  could  be  improved. 
Parlor  lectures  on  civics  were  of  course  still 
farther  in  the  future.  Poor  government  was 
simply  a  permanent  disability,  like  weather, 
or  lameness,  or  the  fashions;  folk  must  get 
along  as  best  they  could  in  spite  of  it.  The 
town  remained  a  chaos  of  maladministra 
tion  and  of  non-administration;  but  when 
the  decencies  are,  for  the  time  being,  de 
spaired  of,  one  may  still  try  for  the  luxuries. 
So  the  city  girded  itself  for  a  great  festival; 
the  nation  approved  and  cooperated,  and  a 
vast  congeries  of  white  palaces  began  to  rise 
on  our  far  edge. 

The  detailed  execution  of  this  immense 
undertaking  was  largely  local,  of  course. 
Though  the  work  was  initiated  by  older 
heads  (some  of  them  were  too  old  and  were 
dropped),  there  were  places  on  the  innum 
erable  committees  for  younger  ones  —  for 
men  in  their  early  thirties;  their  vigor,  en 
thusiasm,  and  even  initiative  (within  under- 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

stood  limits)  would  greatly  further  the  cause. 
There  were  (among  others)  committees  on 
entertainment  to  engage  the  services  of 
young  men  of  position,  leisure,  and  social 
experience.  There  were  many  foreign  digni 
taries  to  be  received  and  guided;  there  must 
be  lively  and  presentable  youths  to  help 
manoeuvre  them.  Raymond,  who  was  sup 
posed  to  have  mingled  in  European  society 
(instead  of  having  viewed  it  from  afar,  in 
detachment),  was  asked  to  serve  in  this  field. 
There  were  equally  good  opportunities  for 
brisk,  aggressive  young  men  on  finance  com 
mittees  and  such-like  bodies,  wherein  promi 
nent  sexagenarians  did  the  heavily  orna 
mental  and  allowed  good  scope  for  younger 
men  who  had  begun  to  get  a  record  and  who 
wished  to  confirm  ability  in  influential  eyes. 
This  opened  a  road  for  John  W.  McComas, 
who  made  a  record,  indeed,  in  the  matter  of 
gathering  local  subscriptions.  He  dented  the 
consciousness  of  several  important  men  in 
his  own  field,  and  got  praised  in  the  press 
for  his  indefatigability  and  his  powers  of 
persuasion.  Before  the  six  months  of  fes- 
[  123  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

tivity  were  half  over,  our  Johnny  had  be 
come  a  "prominent  citizen"  and  his  new 
bank  almost  a  household  word. 

Raymond  did  less  well.  The  great  organ 
ization  was  an  executive  hierarchy:  ranks 
and  rows  of  officials,  with  due  heed  not  only 
to  coordination  but  to  subordination.  Some 
men  do  their  best  under  such  conditions; 
others,  their  worst.  Raymond,  a  strong  in 
dividualist,  a  pronounced  egoist,  could  not 
"fall  in."  Even  in  his  simple  field  —  one 
concerned  chiefly  with  but  the  outward 
flourishes  —  the  big  machine  irked  and  em 
barrassed  him.  He  withdrew.  When  an  im 
perial  prince  was  publicly  "received,"  with 
ceremonies  that  mingled  old-world  formal 
ities  (however  lamely  followed)  and  local 
inspirations  (however  poorly  disciplined),  the 
moving  event  went  off  with  no  help  of  his: 
I  believe  he  even  smiled  at  it  all  from  a 
balcony. 

It  was  here  that  Raymond  began  to  make 
clear  his  true  type.   He  was  Goethe's  "bad 
citizen"  —  the  man  who  is  unable  to  com 
mand  and  unwilling  to  oboy. 
[    124    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

After  a  particularly  flamboyant  appre 
ciation  of  McComas's  services  in  a  Sunday 
newspaper,  I  ventured  to  touch  on  our 
Johnny's  rise  in  Raymond's  hearing.  The 
two  had  not  met  for  years;  and  Johnny  had 
probably  no  greater  place  in  Raymond's 
mind  than  Raymond,  as  I  remembered  once 
finding,  had  in  Johnny's.  But  Raymond  did 
not  yet  pretend  to  overlook  or  to  forget  or 
to  ignore  him;  nor  did  he  yet  allow  himself 
to  mention  Johnny  as  a  one-time  dweller  in 
his  father's  stable. 

"Why,  yes,"  said  Raymond;  "he  seems  to 
be  coming  on  fast.  Climbing  like  anything." 

This,  I  felt,  was  disapproval,  slightly  tinc 
tured  with  contempt.  But  there  are  two 
kinds  of  progress  on  a  ladder  or  a  stairway. 
There  is  the  climbing  up,  and  there  is  (as 
we  sometimes  let  ourselves  say)  the  climbing 
down. 

It  was  at  the  imperial  reception  that  Ray 
mond  and  Johnny  finally  met.  Let  us  figure 
Raymond  as  descending  from  his  satirical 
balcony,  and  Johnny,  with  his  wife,  as  ear 
nestly  working  his  way  up  the  great  stairway 
[  125  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

—  the  scalone,  as  Italy  had  taught  Raymond 
to  call  it.  This  was  an  ample  affair  with  an 
elaborate  handrail,  whose  function  was  nulli 
fied  by  potted  plants,  and  with  a  commodi 
ous  landing,  whose  corners  contained  many 
thickset  palms.  A  crowd  swarmed  up;  a 
crowd  swarmed  down;  the  hundreds  were  con 
gested  among  the  palms.  Johnny,  with  his 
wife  on  his  arm,  was  robust  and  hearty, 
and  smiled  on  things  in  general  as  he  fought 
their  way  up.  He  took  the  occasion  as  he 
took  any  other  occasion:  much  for  granted, 
but  with  a  certain  air  of  richly  belonging  and 
of  worthily  fitting  in.  His  wife  —  "I  sup 
pose  it  was  his  wife,"  said  Raymond  —  was 
elaborately  gowned  and  in  high  feather:  a 
successful  delegate  of  luxury.  Obviously  an 
occasion  of  this  sort  was  precisely  what  she 
had  long  been  waiting  for.  Despite  the  press 
about  her,  she  made  her  costume  and  her 
carriage  tell  for  all  they  might.  A  triumph 
ing  couple,  even  Raymond  was  obliged  to 
concede.  The  acme  of  team  work  .  .  . 

"There  we  were  —  stuck  in  the  crowd," 
said  Raymond,  whose  one  desire  seemed  to 
[    126    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

have  been  to  gain  the  street.  "Not  too  close, 
fortunately.  I  had  to  bow,  but  I  did  n't 
have  to  speak;  and  I  did  n't  have  to  be  'pre 
sented.'  He  gave  me  quite  a  nod." 

And  no  great  exercise  of  imagination  was 
required  for  me  to  see  how  distant  and  re 
served  was  Raymond's  bow  in  return. 

IV 

That  autumn,  after  the  festal  flags  had 
ceased  their  flaunting  and  fire  had  made  a 
wide  sweep  over  the  white  palaces,  Raymond 
suddenly  went  abroad.  It  was  to  be  a  stay 
of  three  or  four  months.  He  first  wrote  me 
from  Paris. 

He  wrote  again  in  December,  also  from 
Paris,  and  told  me  tout  court  that  he  was 
engaged  to  be  married.  I  give  this  news  to 
you  as  suddenly  as  he  gave  it  to  me. 

You  can  supply  motives  as  easily  as  I. 
His  parents  were  gone  and  his  family  life 
was  nil.  The  old  house  was  large  and  lonely. 
You  may  believe  him  influenced,  if  you  like, 
by  his  last  view  of  Johnny  McComas  and 
by  Johnny's  amazing  effect  of  completeness 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

and  content.  You  may  fancy  him  as  visited 
by  compunctions  and  mortifications  due  to 
his  consciousness  of  his  own  futility.  Or 
you  may  fall  back  upon  the  simple  and  gen 
eral  promptings  that  are  smoothly  current 
in  the  minds  of  us  all.  My  own  notion, 
however,  is  this:  he  never  would  have  married 
at  home;  only  an  insidious  whiff  of  romance, 
encountered  in  France  or  Italy,  could  have 
accomplished  his  undoing. 

Raymond's  own  advices  were  meagre. 
"Your  emotional  participation  not  particu 
larly  desired  "  —  such  seemed  to  be  the  mes 
sage  that  lay  invisible  between  his  few  lines. 
But  other  correspondents  supplied  the  lacunoe. 
He  was  to  marry  a  girl  whose  family  formed 
part  of  the  American  colony  in  the  French 
capital.  At  least,  the  feminine  members  of 
the  family  were  there:  the  mother,  and  an 
elder  sister.  The  father,  according  to  a  cus 
tom  that  still  provoked  Gallic  comment, 
was  elsewhere:  he  was  following  the  markets 
in  America.  The  bride-to-be  was  between 
nineteen  and  twenty.  Raymond  himself 
was  thirty-three. 

[    128    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

He  advised  me,  later,  that  the  wedding 
would  take  place  at  the  end  of  February  and 
requested  me  to  obtain  and  forward  some 
of  the  quaint  documents  demanded  at  such 
a  juncture  by  the  French  authorities.  He 
added  that  he  hoped  for  a  honeymoon  in 
Italy,  but  that  his  fiancee  favored  Biarritz 
and  Pau. 

The  wedding  came  off  at  one  of  the  Ameri 
can  churches  in  Paris.  It  was  a  sumptuous 
ceremonial,  aided  by  a  bishop  (who  was  on 
his  travels,  but  who  had  not  forgotten  to 
bring  along  his  vestments)  and  by  the  at 
tendance  of  half  the  colony.  Raymond  was 
obliged  to  put  up  with  all  this  pomp  and 
show,  much  as  it  ran  counter  to  his  tastes 
and  inclinations.  But  fortunately  he  was  made 
even  less  of  than  most  young  men  on  such  an 
occasion;  he  had  few  connections  on  either 
side  of  the  water,  so  the  bride's  connections 
dominated  the  day  and  made  her  the  chief 
figure  still  more  completely  than  is  commonly 
the  case.  And  the  honeymoon  was  spent,  not 
in  the  north  of  Italy,  but  in  the  south  of 
France. 

F    129    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

There  are  times  when  a  young  girl  must 
have  her  way.  And  there  are  times  when  a 
young  husband  (but  not  so  young)  will  deter 
mine  to  have  his.  I  knew  Raymond. 

The  couple  were  in  no  haste  to  get  home. 
The  four  months  ran  to  almost  a  year.  I 
first  met  the  new  wife  at  a  reception  in  the 
early  autumn. 

"Gertrude,"  said  Raymond,  "let  me  pre 
sent  to  you  my  old  friend — "  H'm!  let  me 
see:  what  is  my  name?  —  Oh,  yes:  "Ger 
trude,  let  me  present  to  you  my  old  friend, 
George  Waite." 

Can  a  young  bride,  dressed  in  black,  and 
dressed  rather  simply  too,  look  almost 
wicked?  Well,  this  one  contrived  to. 

The  effect  was  not  due  to  her  face,  which 
had  an  expression  of  naive  sophistication, 
or  of  sophisticated  naivete,  not  at  all  likely 
to  mislead  the  mature;  nor  to  her  carriage, 
which,  though  slightly  self-conscious,  was 
modest  enough,  and  not  a  bit  too  demure. 
It  was  due  to  her  dress,  which,  after  all,  was 
not  quite  so  simple,  either  in  intention  or 
in  execution,  as  it  seemed.  It  was  black,  and 
I  130  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

black  only;  and  it  was  trimmed  with  black 
jet  or  spangles  or  passementerie  or  what 
ever —  let  some  one  else  find  the  name.  It 
was  cut  close,  and  it  was  cut  low;  too  close 
and  too  low  —  she  was  the  young  married 
woman  with  a  vengeance.  It  took  a  tone 
and  bespoke  a  tradition  to  which  most  of 
us  were  as  yet  strangers,  and  our  initiation 
into  a  new  and  equivocal  realm  had  been  too 
sudden  for  our  powers  of  adjustment.  It 
was  Paris  in  its  essence  —  the  thing  in  itself 
—  and  it  had  all  come  unedited  through  the 
hands  of  a  mother  and  a  sister  who  were  so 
rapt  or  so  subservient  as  to  be  incapable  of 
offering  opposition  to  the  full  pungency  of 
the  Parisian  evangel,  and  of  hushing  down 
an  emphatic  text  for  acceptance  in  a  more 
quiet  environment.  I  can  only  say  that  sev 
eral  nice  young  chaps  looked  once  and  then 
looked  away.  Raymond  himself  was  incon 
venienced.  Nor  did  matters  mend  when, 
within  a  week  or  so,  Mrs.  Raymond  Prince 
began  to  rate  the  women  of  her  new  circle  as 
"homespun." 

Her  little  hand  fell  most  heavily  on  these 
t    131    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

poor  aborigines  when  two  or  three  members 
of  Raymond's  singing-class  loyally  came  to 
one  of  her  own  receptions.  These  Adeles  and 
Gertrudes  of  the  earlier  day  were  now  wives 
and  mothers,  with  the  interests  proper  to 
such.  They  had  shepherded  babies  through 
croup  and  diphtheria,  and  were  now  seeing 
husky,  wholesome  boys  and  girls  of  twelve 
and  thirteen  through  the  primary  schools. 
When  among  themselves,  they  talked  of 
servants  and  husbands.  They  had  not  mar 
ried  and  gone  West  or  East;  they  had  mar 
ried  at  home,  and  they  had  stayed  at  home. 
They  had  had  too  many  things  on  their 
hands  and  minds  to  catch  up  much  of  the 
recent  exoticism  stirring  about  them  here  in 
town,  and  they  were  far  from  able  to  cope 
with  this  recent  importation  of  exoticism 
from  the  Rue  de  la  Paix. 

Raymond  came  home,  one  afternoon,  in 
time  for  the  last  half-hour  of  his  wife's  last 
reception.  Her  dress,  on  this  occasion,  was 
quite  as  daring,  in  its  way,  as  on  the  other, 
and  original  to  the  point  of  the  bizarre.  One 
of  the  early  Adeles  was  leaving,  but  she 
[  132  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

stopped  for  a  moment  and  attempted  speech. 
She  was  the  particular  Adele  with  the  pierc 
ing  soprano  voice  —  a  voice  which  had  since 
lowered  itself  to  sing  lullabies  to  three  suc 
cessive  infants. 

"Well,  Raymond  — "  she  began  hope 
fully,  and  stopped.  She  tried  again,  but 
failed;  and  she  passed  on  and  out  with  her 
words  unsaid. 

"Well,  Raymond—"  Yes,  I  am  afraid 
that  that  was  the  impression  of  more  early 
friends  than  one. 


Raymond  had  expected,  of  course,  to  give 
his  wife  her  own  way  at  the  beginning  — 
at  the  very  beginning,  that  is;  and  he  had 
expected,  equally,  to  have  her  make  a  defi 
nite  impression  on  the  circle  awaiting  her. 
But  — 

Well,  he  had  intended  to  "take  her  in 
hand,"  and  to  do  it  soon.  She  was  to  be 
formed,  or  re-formed;  she  was  to  be  adjusted, 
both  to  things  in  general  and  to  himself  es 
pecially.  Besides  being  her  husband,  he  was 
[  133  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

to  be  her  kindly  elder  brother,  her  monitor, 
patient  but  firm;  she  was  to  enter  upon  a 
state  of  tutelage.  He  was  pretty  certain  to 
be  right  in  all  his  views,  opinions  and  prac 
tices;  and  she,  if  her  views,  opinions  and  prac 
tices  were  at  variance  with  his,  was  pretty 
certain  to  be  in  the  wrong.  He  assumed  that, 
during  those  few  years  in  Paris,  she  had 
learned  it  all  in  one  big  lesson  only.  The 
time  had  been  too  short  to  confirm  all  this 
sudden  instruction  into  a  reasoned  and  as 
similated  way  of  life;  by  no  means  had  that 
superficial  miscellany  been  rubbed  into  the 
warp  and  woof  of  her  being.  The  Parisian 
top-dressing  would  be  removed  and  the  essen 
tial  subsoil  be  exposed  and  tilled.  .  .  . 

H'm! 

One  of  the  strongest  of  her  early  impres 
sions  was  naturally  that  of  the  house  in  which 
she  was  to  live.  It  was  big  and  roomy;  it 
was  detached,  and  thus  open  to  light  and 
air.  But  its  elephantine  woodwork  repelled 
her,  for  she  had  grown  up  amid  the  rococo 
exuberances  of  Paris  apartments.  The  heavy 
honesty  of  black-walnut  depressed  her  after 
[  134  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

the  gilded  stucco  of  her  mother's  salon.  And 
that  huge,  portentous  orchestrion  took  up 
such  an  immensity  of  room! 

I  doubt  if  the  neighborhood  itself  pleased 
her  much  better,  though  it  was  homogeneous 
(in  its  way),  and  dignified,  and  enjoyed  an 
exceptional  measure  of  quietude.  Perhaps 
it  was  too  quiet,  after  some  years  of  a  bal 
cony  on  a  boulevard.  And  it  is  true  that 
some  of  the  big  houses  were  vacant,  and 
that  some  of  the  families  roundabout  went 
away  too  often  and  stayed  away  too  long. 
An  empty  house  is  a  dead  house,  and  when 
doors  and  windows  are  boarded  up  you  may 
say  the  dead  house  is  laid  out.  Things  were 
sometimes  triste  —  the  French  for  final  con 
demnation.  The  exodus  so  long  foreshad 
owed  seemed  appreciably  under  way.  This 
Gertrude  became  increasingly  conscious,  as 
the  months  went  on,  that  most  of  the  peo 
ple  she  wanted  to  see  and  most  of  the  houses 
she  was  prompted  to  frequent  were  miles 
away,  and  that, the  flood-tide  of  business 
rolled  between. 

Of  her  reaction  to  the  circle  in  which  she 
I  135  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

first  found  herself  I  have  given  you  one  or 
two  indications.  It  would  be  easy,  as  it 
would  be  customary,  to  give  some  other  of 
her  early  social  experiences  in  detail  and  her 
reactions  to  them;  but  my  interest  is  frankly 
in  her  husband  and  in  his  reactions.  It  was 
of  him,  too,  that  I  saw  the  most;  and  I  have 
never  gone  greatly  into  society. 

At  the  end  of  a  long  and  possibly  some 
what  dull  winter  his  wife  began  to  hint  the 
advantageousness  of  transferring  themselves 
to  that  other  part  of  town.  Raymond  was 
not  precisely  in  the  position  where  he  cared 
to  pay  high  rent  for  a  small  house,  while  a 
big  house  was  standing  empty  and  unrealiz 
able.  Pouts;  frowns  .  .  .  But  nature  came 
to  his  aid.  With  a  new  young  life  soon  to 
appear  above  the  horizon,  now  was  no  time 
to  shift.  His  son  should  be  born  in  the 
house  in  which  he  ought  to  be  born.  A 
reasonable  view,  on  the  whole;  and  it  pre 
vailed. 

Raymond  had  said  "son,"  and  son  it  was. 
The  baby  was  not  named  Raymond:  his 
father,  however  much  of  an  egoist,  was  not 
[  136  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

willing  to  put  himself  forward  as  such  so 
obviously,  nor  for  a  period  that  promised  to 
be  indefinitely  long.  Nor  was  the  baby  called 
Bartholomew,  after  his  maternal  grandfather 
in  the  East:  for  who  cared  to  inflict  such  an 
old-fashioned,  four-syllable  name  on  such  a 
small  morsel  of  flesh?  He  entered  the  battle 
under  the  neutral  and  not  over-colorful 
pennon  of  Albert:  his  mother  could  thus  call 
him  "Bertie,"  and  think,  not  too  remotely, 
of  her  parent  on  the  stock  exchange. 

Raymond  was  not  long  in  discovering, 
after  reaching  home,  what  sacrifices  the  new 
life  was  to  involve.  On  the  Continent,  in 
the  midst  of  change  and  stir,  these  had  not 
foretold  themselves.  Back  in  his  own  house, 
his  interests  —  "intellectual  interests"  he 
called  them  —  began  to  assert  themselves 
in  the  old  way.  But  he  was  no  longer  free 
to  range  the  fields  of  the  mind  and  take  shots 
at  the  arts  as  they  rose.  Least  of  all  was  he 
to  read  in  the  evening.  That  was  to  neglect, 
to  affront.  However,  the  arrival  of  little 
Albert  —  poor  tad !  —  changed  the  current  of 
his  wife's  own  interests  and  helped  to  place 
[  137  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

one  more  rather  vital  matter  in  abeyance. 
He  was  to  live  —  for  a  while,  anyway  —  in 
his  present  home;  and  he  was  to  pursue  — 
for  a  while,  anyway  —  some  of  the  accus 
tomed  interests  of  his  bachelor  days.  He 
expected  that,  before  long,  his  wife  would 
accept  his  environment  and  the  practices  he 
had  always  followed  within  it.  She  needed 
enlightenment  on  many  points.  He  had  al 
ready  communicated  some  of  his  views  on 
dress,  for  example;  and  he  had  readjusted 
her  notions  on  the  preparation  of  salads.  He 
gave  her,  pretty  constantly,  corrective  glances 
through,  or  over,  his  eyeglasses,  —  for  his 
sight  had  begun  to  weaken  early,  as  his  father 
had  foreseen,  —  and  he  meant  that  such 
glances  should  count.  She  required  to  be 
edited;  well,  the  new  manuscript  was  worth 
his  pains,  and  would  be  highly  creditable 
in  its  revised  version. 

VI 

If  one  advantage  showed  forth  from  a  sit 
uation   that   seemed,   in   general,   not   alto 
gether   promising,   it   was   this:   Raymond, 
[    138    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

hearing  his  native  town  commented  upon 
unfavorably  by  his  wife,  —  who  was  keen 
and  constant  in  her  criticisms,  —  began  to 
defend  it.  It  was  one  thing  for  the  native- 
born  to  pick  flaws;  it  was  another  when  that 
ungracious  work  was  attempted  by  a  new 
comer.  And  he  meant  not  only  to  defend 
it,  but  to  remain  in  it,  though  his  wife  had 
married  him  partly  on  the  strength  of  his 
European  predilections,  and  largely  on  the 
assumption  that  a  good  part  of  their  mar 
ried  life  would  be  spent  abroad.  He  even 
began  to  wonder  if  he  might  not  join  in  and 
help  improve  things.  Like  most  of  his  fellow- 
townsmen,  he  regarded  the  city's  participa 
tion  in  the  late  national  festival  as  a  great  step 
in  advance,  —  the  first  of  many  like  steps  soon 
to  follow.  The  day  after  the  Fair  was  late; 
but  better  to  be  late  than  never.  Really, 
there  was  hope  for  the  Big  Black  Botch.  More 
and  more  he  felt  inclined  to  lessen  still  further 
its  lessening  enormity.  After  all,  this  town 
was  the  town  of  his  birth :  and  a  fundamental 
egoism  cried  out  that  it  should  be  more 
worthy  of  him.  He  recalled  a  group  of  Amer- 
[  139  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

ican  women  —  Easterners  —  whom,  during 
his  first  trip  abroad,  he  had  caught  poring 
over  the  guest-book  of  a  hotel  in  Sorrento. 
He  was  the  last  male  arrival  in  a  slow  season; 
he  seemed  interesting  and  promising;  evi 
dently  they  had  had  hopes.  "But,"  asked 
one  of  them,  "how  is  it  you  are  willing  to 
register  openly  from  such  a  town  as  that?" 
—  and  Raymond  had  felt  the  sting.  "Such 
nerve,  such  bumptiousness!"  he  said  to  me 
in  recalling  that  query  some  years  later.  But 
he  did  not  add  that  he  had  tried  to  deliver 
any  riposte.  Instead  he  was  now  to  make  a 
belated  return  at  home,  where  effort  most 
counted.  The  years  immediately  to  come 
were  to  be  full  of  new  openings  and  op 
portunities;  in  his  own  way,  and  under  his 
peculiar  handicaps,  he  was  to  try  to  take 
some  advantage  of  them. 


PART  V 
I 

LITTLE  ALBERT'S  babyhood  kept  his  mother 
a  good  deal  at  home  —  and  by  "home"  I 
mean  the  house  in  which  he  had  been 
born.  His  father's  lessened  interest  in  Europe 
(and  his  diminished  deference  for  it)  kept 
his  mother  at  home  completely  —  and  by 
"home"  I  now  mean  the  town  in  which  Al 
bert  had  been  born.  Father,  mother,  and 
offspring  filled  the  big  house  as  well  as  they 
could  —  the  big,  old  house  as  it  was  some 
times  called  by  those  who  cherished  a  chro 
nology  that  was  purely  American;  and  Al 
bert  was  more  than  a  year  and  a  half  along 
in  life  before  his  grandmother  came  across 
to  see  him  and  to  inspect  the  distant  m6- 
nage.  She  brought  her  water-waves  and  her 
sharpened  critical  sense,  and  went  back 
leaving  the  impression  that  she  was  artificial 
and  exacting. 

[    141    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

"She  missed  her  Paris,"  said  Raymond, 
"and  her  drive  in  the  Bois." 

"H'm!"  said  I,  recalling  that  the  town's 
recent  chief  executive  had  pronounced  us, 
not  many  years  back,  the  equal  of  Paris  in 
civic  beauty. 

"We  have  no  Bois,  as  yet,"  he  added, 
thoughtfully.  "Do  you  think  we  ever  shall 
have  one?" 

He  was  revolving  the  Bois,  not  as  a  definite 
tract  of  park  land,  but  as  a  social  institution. 

"I  think,"  said  I,  "that  we  had  better  be 
satisfied  with  developing  according  to  our 
own  nature  and  needs." 

"Yes,"  he  returned;  "there  was  the  French 
man  at  the  fox-hunt:  'No  band,  no  prome 
nade,  no  nossing/  Well,  we  must  go  on  our 
own  tack,  as  soon  as  we  discover  it." 

It  need  not  be  imagined  that  his  mother- 
in-law's  look-in  of  a  month  made  his  wife 
more  contented.  She  kept  on  wishing  for  her 
new  friends  in  another  quarter,  and  (more 
strongly)  for  the  familiar  scenes  of  the  other 
side.  Raymond  did  not  wish  the  expense 
involved  in  either  move.  His  affairs  were 
[  142  ] 


ON  THE  STAIES 

now  going  but  tolerably.  So  far  as  the  bank 
was  concerned  —  a  bank  that  had  once  been 
almost  a  "family"  institution  —  his  influ 
ence  was  naught.  He  was  only  a  stockholder, 
and  a  smaller  stockholder  than  once.  His 
interest,  in  any  sense,  was  but  a  brief,  pe 
riodical  interest  in  dividends.  These  were 
coming  with  a  commendable  regularity  still. 
His  rentals  came  in  fairly  too;  but  most  of 
them  were  now  derived  from  properties  on 
the  edge  of  the  business  district  —  proper 
ties  with  no  special  future  and  likely  only 
to  hold  their  own  however  favorable  gene 
ral  conditions  might  continue.  Travel?  No. 
A  man  travels  best  in  his  youth,  when  he 
is  foot-free,  care-free,  fancy-free.  Go  travel 
ing  too  late,  or  once  too  often,  and  there  is 
a  difference.  The  final  checking-off  of  some 
thing  one  has  "always  meant  to  see"  may 
result  in  the  most  ashen  disappointment  of 
all:  even  intuition,  without  the  pains  of 
actual  experience,  should  suffice  to  warn. 
Besides,  as  Raymond  said,  — 

"We've  both  had  a  good  deal  of  it.   Let's 
stay  at  home." 

[    143    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

His  wife  cast  about  her.  There  is  a  mood  in 
which  a  deprivation  of  high  comedy  may  drive 
one  to  low-down  farce.  To-day  people  are 
even  going  farther.  A  worthy  stage  is  dead, 
they  say;  and  they  patronize,  somewhat  will 
fully  and  contemptuously  (or  with  a  loose, 
slack  tolerance  that  is  worse),  the  moving 
pictures.  Perhaps  it  was  in  some  such  mood 
that  Raymond's  wife  took  up  with  Mrs. 
Johnny  McComas.  They  were  but  three 
streets  apart.  Mrs.  McComas  was  lively, 
energetic,  determined  to  drive  on;  and  her 
ability  to  assimilate  rapidly  and  light-hand- 
edly  her  growing  opulence  made  it  seem  by  no 
means  a  mere  vulgar  external  adornment. 
She  knew  how  to  move  among  the  remark 
able  furnishings  with  which  she  had  sur 
rounded  herself  in  that  old-new  house,  and 
how  to  make  the  momentum  gained  there 
serve  her  ends  in  the  world  outside. 

"It  will  be  a  short  life  here,"  her  husband 
had  told  her  on  their  taking  possession; 
"then,  a  quick  sale  —  at  a  good  figure  —  to 
some  manufacturing  concern,  and  on  we  go." 

"If  it's  to  be  short,  let's  make  it  merry," 
[  144  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

she  had  rejoined;  and  nothing  had  been 
spared  that  could  give  liveliness  to  their 
stately  old  interiors,  while  those  interiors 
lasted. 

Mrs.  Raymond  Prince  vaguely  pronounced 
their  house  "amusing."  It  had,  like  Adele 
McComas  herself,  a  provocative  dash  which 
fell  in  with  her  present  mood,  and  it  pleased 
her  that  its  chatelaine  was  inclined  to  dress  up 
to  its  wayward  sofas  and  hangings.  She  even 
went  with  Mrs.  Johnny  on  shopping  tours 
and  abetted  her  as  her  fancies,  desires  and 
expenditures  ran  riot.  It  was  a  mood  of 
irresponsibility  —  almost  of  defiant  irrespon 
sibility. 

Now  was  the  nascent  day  of  the  country 
club.  Several  of  these  welcome  institutions 
had  lately  set  themselves  up  in  a  modest, 
tentative  way.  Acceptance  was  complete, 
and  all  they  had  to  do  was  to  grow.  With 
one  of  these  McComas  cast  his  lot.  At  the 
start  it  was  a  simple  enough  affair;  but  Johnny 
must  have  sensed  its  potentialities  and  savored 
its  affinities,  its  coming  congruity  with  him 
self.  It  was  to  become,  shortly,  a  club  for 
[  145  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

the  suddenly,  violently  rich,  the  flushed  with 
dollars,  the  congested  with  prosperity  —  for 
newcomers  who  had  met  Success  and  beaten 
her  at  her  own  game.  Stir  on  all  hands,  the 
reek  of  sudden  felicity  in  the  air.  In  later 
years  people  with  access  to  better  things  of 
similar  sort  were  known  to  become  indignant 
when  asked  to  associate  themselves  with  it. 
"Why  should  I  want  to  join  that  ?"  was  the 
•question  they  put.  But  it  pleased  Johnny 
McComas,  both  by  its  present  manifestations 
and  its  latent  possibilities.  It  was  richly  in 
unison  with  his  own  nature,  and  I  believe  he 
had  a  ravishing  vision  of  its  magnificent 
futurities. 

Last  year  my  wife  and  I  were  taken  to  a 
Sunday  afternoon  concert  out  there.  We 
found  a  place  of  towers  and  arcades,  of  end 
less  corridors  planted  with  columns  and  num 
berless  chairs  in  numberless  varieties,  of 
fountained  courts,  of  ball-rooms,  of  concert- 
halls,  of  gay  apparel  and  cool  drinks.  We 
heard  of  fairs,  horse-shows,  tournaments  in 
golf  and  tennis.  The  restaurant,  with  its  acre 
of  tables,  glassed  and  naperied;  the  ranges  of 
[  146  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

telephone  booths,  all  going  it  together;  the 
cellars,  a  vast  subterrene,  with  dusky  avenues 
of  lockers,  each  cluttered  with  beverages  of 
individual  predilection  —  though  I  suppose 
that,  after  all,  they  were  a  good  deal  alike  .  .  . 

Well,  it  was  too  much  for  us;  and  my  Elsie, 
who  is  essentially,  the  lady,  if  woman  ever  was, 
came  away  feeling  a  little  dowdy  and  a  good 
deal  out  of  date. 

At  that  earlier  period,  however,  it  was  still 
simple;  the  germ  was  there,  but  the  develop 
ment  of  its  possibilities  had  only  begun.  When 
Mrs.  McComas  invited  Mrs.  Prince  to  drive 
out  with  her  and  see  some  tennis,  Mrs.  Prince 
was  quite  ready  to  accept. 

I  do  not  know  just  what  mode  of  locomo 
tion  they  employed.  It  was  in  the  early  days 
of  the  automobile  and  Johnny  McComas  was 
one  of  the  first  men  in  town  to  have  one.  I 
recall,  in  fact,  some  of  his  initial  experiences 
with  it.  On  a  Sunday  afternoon  I  encountered 
him  in  one  of  these  still  relatively  unstudied 
contraptions  on  a  frequented  driveway.  An 
other  man  was  sitting  beside  him  patiently. 
The  conveyance  was  making  no  progress  at 
[  147  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

all.  Fortunately  it  had  stopped  close  enough 
to  the  curb  not  to  interfere  with  the  progress 
of  other  and  more  familiar  equipages. 

"We're  stuck,"  said  Johnny,  jovially,  as  he 
caught  sight  of  me.  "Ran  for  three  or  four 
miles  slick  as  a  whistle  —  and  look  at  us  now! " 
It  entertained  him  —  a  kink  in  a  new  toy. 
And  he  enjoyed  the  interest  of  the  people 
collected  about. 

"You're  gummed  up,  I  expect,"  said  I.  In 
those  days  nobody  knew  much  about  the  new 
creature  and  its  habits,  and  one  man's  guess 
was  as  good  as  another's.  Two  or  three  by 
standers  eyed  me  deferentially,  as  a  probable 
expert. 

"Likely  enough,"  he  agreed  —  and  that 
made  me  an  expert  beyond  doubt.  "But  this 
will  do  for  to-day.  We've  been  here  twenty 
minutes." 

He  had  the  car  pushed  to  a  near-by  stable, 
amidst  the  mixed  emotions  of  the  little  crowd, 
and  next  day  he  had  it  hauled  home. 

"You  were  right,"  he  said,  when  I  met  him 
out  again  in  it,  a  week  later.  "It  was  gummed 
up,  so  to  speak;  but  it's  working  like  a  charm 
\  148  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

to-day.  Get  in  and  I  '11  take  you  a  few  miles. 
That  other  fellow  got  an  awful  grouch." 

It  may  have  been  by  this  machine,  or  by 
some  more  familiar  mode  of  locomotion,  that 
the  two  women  reached  the  country  club 
and  its  tennis  tournament.  Gertrude  Prince 
strolled  through  its  grounds  and  galleries  with 
the  aloof  and  amused  air  of  one  touring  through 
a  foreign  town  —  a  town  never  seen  before  and 
likely  to  be  left  behind  altogether  within  an 
hour  or  two.  It  was  at  once  semi-smart  and 
semi-simple.  She  took  it  lightly,  even  con 
descendingly;  and  when  Johnny  McGomas 
himself  appeared  somewhat  later  and  set 
them  down  at  a  little  marble  table  near  a 
fountain-jet  and  offered  cocktails  as  a  pre 
liminary  to  a  variety  of  sandwiches,  she  de 
cided,  after  looking  about  and  seeing  a  few 
other  ladies  with  glasses  before  them  on  other 
little  marble  tables,  to  accept.  It  was  a  lark 
in  some  town  of  the  provinces  —  Meaux  or 
Melun;  what  difference  did  it  make? 

They  formed  a  little  group  altogether  to 
Johnny's  liking.  His  wife  was  dressed  dash 
ingly  ;  his  wife's  guest  made  a  very  fair  second ; 
f  149  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

he  himself,  although  he  never  lifted  a  racquet, 
was  in  the  tennis  garb  of  that  day. 

"You  both  look  ripping,"  he  declared  with 
hearty  satisfaction.  To  look  thus,  before  com 
peting  items  in  the  throng,  was  the  object  of 
the  place,  the  reason  for  its  developing  mise 
en  scene. 

Johnny  himself  looked  ripping  —  cool,  con 
fident,  content,  and  at  the  top  of  his  days. 

"It  was  amusing  ..."  said  Gertrude  to 
me,  with  an  upward  inflection,  a  week  later. 

And  she  asked  me  for  more  about  Johnny 
McComas. 

n 

If  those  were  days  when  people  began  to 
combine  for  the  pursuit  of  pleasure,  they  were 
also  days  when  people  began  to  gather  at  the 
call  of  public  duty.  If  clubs  were  forming 
on  the  borders,  other  clubs,  leagues,  societies 
were  forming  nearer  the  centre  —  organiza 
tions  to  make  effective  the  scattered  good- will 
of  the  well-disposed  and  to  gain  some  better 
ment  in  the  local  political  life.  To  initiate  and 
conduct  such  movements  only  a  few  were 
[  150  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

needed;  but  the  many  were  expected  to  con 
tribute,  if  not  their  zeal  and  their  time,  at 
least  their  dollars.  It  was  patriotic  righteous 
ness  made  easy:  a  man  had  only  to  give  his 
fifty  dollars  or  his  five  hundred  to  feel,  with 
out  further  personal  exertion,  that  he  was  a 
good  citizen  and  was  forwarding,  as  all  good 
citizens  should,  a  worthy  cause.  This  way  of 
doing  it  fell  in  wonderfully  well  with  Ray 
mond's  temperament  and  abilities  (or  lack 
of  them) :  the  liberality  of  his  contributions 
did  not  remain  unknown,  and  he  was  some 
times  held  up  as  a  favorable  specimen  of  the 
American  citizen. 

Another  movement  was  soon  to  engage  his 
attention.  If  the  prosperous  were  to  have 
their  playgrounds  beyond  the  city's  outskirts, 
the  less  prosperous  should  have  theirs  within 
the  city's  limits.  The  scheme  of  a  system 
of  small  parks  and  playgrounds  quite  took 
Raymond's  fancy.  It  contained,  besides  the 
idea  of  social  amelioration,  the  even  more 
grateful  idea  of  municipal  beautification.  In 
time,  indeed,  might  not  this  same  notion, 
fortified  by  experience  and  given  a  wider 
f  151  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

application,  end  by  redeeming  the  town  not 
merely  in  spots  but  in  its  entirety?  —  a  saved 
and  graced  whole,  not  only  as  to  its  heart, 
but  as  to  its  liberal  and  varied  borders  of 
water,  woodland  and  prairie. 

"I  should  be  proud  of  that,"  said  Ray 
mond  heartily.  The  name  of  such  a  city,  fol 
lowing  one's  own  name  on  any  hotel-register, 
would  indeed  be  a  matter  for  pride. 

He  attended  several  of  the  early  meetings 
that  were  designed  to  get  some  such  project, 
in  its  simpler  form,  under  way.  He  had 
friends  among  professional  men  in  the  arts, 
and  some  acquaintances  among  newly  formed 
bodies  of  social  workers.  He  was  not  slow  in 
perceiving  that  the  way  was  likely  to  be  tedi 
ous  and  hard.  It  called  for  organization  — • 
the  organization  of  hope,  of  patience,  of  hot, 
untiring  zeal,  of  finesse  against  political  chi 
cane,  of  persistence  in  the  face  of  indifference 
and  selfishness.  "It  will  take  years  of  or 
ganized  endeavor,"  he  confessed.  He  recog 
nized  his  own  ineffectiveness  beyond  the  nar 
row  pale  of  hopeful  suggestion,  and  wished 
that  here  too  the  giving  of  a  substantial  sum 
[  152  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

—  a  large  penny-in-the-slot  —  might  produce 
quick  and  facile  results. 

His  wife,  it  is  to  be  feared,  looked  upon 
these  activities  of  his,  however  slight,  with  a 
lack-lustre  eye.  She  knew  nothing  of  local 
problems  and  local  needs.  She  was  conscious 
of  a  hortatory  manner  in  small  matters  and 
of  indifference,  which  she  almost  made  neg 
lect,  in  matters  that  appeared  to  her  to  be 
larger.  If  she  asked  for  a  fairer  share  in  his 
evenings  —  he  belonged  to  a  literary  club, 
a  musical  society,  and  so  on  —  it  was  scant 
consolation  to  be  told  that  he  objected  to 
some  of  her  own  activities  and  associations. 
He  did  not  much  care,  for  example,  to  have 
her  "run"  with  the  McComases  and  others  of 
that  type  or  to  have  her  dawdle  over  glasses, 
tall,  broad,  or  short,  in  places  of  general  dem 
ocratic  assemblage;  and  he  told  her  so.  I  be 
lieve  it  was  about  here  that  she  began  to  find 
him  something  of  a  prig  and  a  doctrinaire;  and 
she  was  not  incapable,  under  provocation,  of 
mentioning  her  impressions.  It  was  about 
here,  I  suspect,  that  he  told  her  something  of 
Johnny  McComas  and  his  origins  —  at  least 
[  153  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

he  once  or  twice  spoke  of  Johnny  with  a  cer 
tain  sharp  scorn  to  me.  He  assuredly  spoke 
of  other  country  clubs  on  the  other  side  of 
town  which  were  more  desirable  for  her  and 
equally  accessible,  save  in  the  material  sense 
of  mere  miles.  Though  he  took  no  interest  in 
athletics,  nor  even  in  the  lighter  out-of-door 
sports,  he  was  willing  to  join  one  of  those 
clubs,  if  it  was  required  of  him. 

His  reference  to  Johnny  McComas  was  de 
signed,  no  doubt,  to  repel  her;  but  the  effect, 
as  became  perfectly  apparent,  was  quite  the 
contrary.  She  was  interested,  even  fascinated, 
by  the  rise  of  a  man  from  so  little  to  so  much. 
She  found  words  and  words  to  express  her 
admiration  of  Johnny's  type,  and  when  Eng 
lish  words  ran  short  she  found  words  in 
French.  He  was  gaillard  ;  he  had  ilan.  What 
was  n't  he?  What  had  n't  he?  Bits  of  bravado, 
I  still  incline  to  think. 

No,  the  McComases  were  not  to  be  left  be 
hind  all  of  a  sudden.  One  day  she  made  an 
other  excursion  to  the  outskirts  with  them; 
and  she  reported  it  to  Raymond,  with  a  little 
air  of  suppressed  mockery,  as  a  perfectly  un- 
[  154  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

objectionable  jaunt.  She  had  gone  with  them 
to  the  cemetery.  Johnny's  mother  had  died 
the  year  before,  and  he  had  been  putting  up 
a  monument  in  Roselands.  This  structure, 
it  developed,  was  no  mere  memorial  to  an 
individual.  It  was  a  tall  shaft,  set  in  the  mid 
dle  of  a  large  lot.  I  saw  it  later  myself:  a 
lavish  erection  (with  all  its  accessory  features 
taken  into  account)  —  one  designed,  as  I  felt, 
to  show  Johnny  himself  to  posterity  as  an 
ancestor,  as  the  founder  of  a  family  line. 
Assuredly  his  own  name,  aside  from  the 
tall  obelisk  itself,  was  the  largest  thing  in 
view. 

Raymond  took  this  account  of  Johnny's 
latest  phase  with  an  admirable  seriousness; 
he  thought  the  better  of  him  for  it.  He  him 
self  was  inclined  to  divide  human-kind  into 
two  classes,  those  who  had  cemetery-lots 
(with  monuments),  and  those  who  had  not. 
The  latter,  of  course,  are  in  a  majority  every 
where.  One  thinks  of  Naples  and  of  the  sad 
road  that  winds  up  past  the  Alhambra  to  — 
Well,  yes;  in  a  majority,  of  course;  and  in 
evitably  so  in  a  large  town  suddenly  thrown 
[  155  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

together  by  a  heaping  up  of  fortuitous  and 
miscellaneous  elements.  In  later  years,  when 
things  were  going  rather  badly  with  Raymond, 
and  when  consideration  seemed  to  fail,  he 
could  always  comfort  himself  with  thoughts 
of  the  Princes'  own  monument  in  that  same 
cemetery.  This  was  another  tall  shaft  in  a 
gray  granite  now  no  longer  to  be  found,  and 
had  been  set  up  by  old  Jehiel  on  the  occasion 
of  the  reinterment  of  some  infants  by  his  first 
wife  —  a  transaction  carried  out  years  be 
fore  Raymond  was  born.  Some  of  the  dates 
on  the  base  of  the  monument  went  back  to 
the  early  thirties.  Well,  there  it  stood,  with 
the  subordinated  headstones  of  Jehiel  and  old 
Beulah,  of  his  own  parents,  and  of  the  half- 
mythical  babes  who,  if  they  had  given  noth 
ing  else  to  the  world,  had  furnished  a  future 
nephew  with  a  social  perspective.  Raymond, 
reconsidering  Johnny's  recent  effort,  now  be 
gan  to  disparage  that  improvised  background, 
and  led  his  wife  to  view  his  own  lot  —  theirs, 
hers  —  only  a  hundred  yards  from  the  other. 
But  she  could  not  respond  to  old  Jehiel  and 
Beulah  —  though  she  tried  to  be  properly 
[  156  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

sympathetic  over  their  son  and  his  wife.  Still 
less  could  she  vitalize  the  infants  who  had  en 
countered  an  epidemic  on  the  prairie  frontier 
and  had  succumbed  more  than  three  score 
years  ago.  If  she  thought  of  any  child  at  all, 
she  thought  doubtless  of  little  Albert  (now 
romping  about  in  his  first  tweed  knicker 
bockers),  who  would  not  die  for  many  years, 
perhaps,  and  who  was  like  enough  to  be  buried 
in  quite  another  spot. 

But  I  think  she  thought,  most  of  all,  of  the 
manly,  cheerful  sorrow  of  Johnny  McComas 
before  the  new  monument  in  the  other  lot. 

Ill 

These  were  also  days  of  panic.  Banks  went 
down  and  bank  officials  threw  themselves 
after.  The  city  was  thrilled,  even  charmed, 
to  find  that  its  financial  perturbations  touched, 
however  slightly,  the  nerves  of  London  and 
Paris.  I  myself  was  in  Algeria  that  winter: 
my  Elsie  and  I  had  decided  on  three  months 
along  the  Mediterranean.  It  was  on  the  white, 
glaring  walls  of  the  casino  at  Biskra  that  the 
news  was  first  bulletined  for  our  eyes.  It  had 
[  157  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

a  glare  of  its  own,  I  assure  you :  for  a  few  days 
we  knew  little  enough  how  we  ourselves  might 
be  standing. 

I  thought  of  the  Mid-Continent,  with  its 
cumbersome  counters  and  partitions  done  in 
walnut  veneer  and  its  old-fashioned  pavement 
in  squares  of  black  and  white.  I  thought  too 
of  Johnny  McComas's  new  institution,  with 
so  many  bright  brass  handrails  and  such  a 
spread  of  tasteful  mosaics  underfoot.  How 
had  they  fared?  Well,  they  had  fared  quite 
differently.  Why  should  a  big,  old  bank  go 
under,  while  a  new,  little  bank  continues  to 
float.  I  cannot  tell  you.  I  was  far  away  at 
the  time.  Perhaps  I  could  not  tell  you  even  if 
I  had  been  on  the  spot.  And  to  other  ques 
tions,  more  important  still,  I  may  be  unable 
to  give,  when  the  pinch  comes,  a  clearer  an 
swer.  The  Mid-Continent  dashed,  or  drifted, 
into  the  rocky  hands  of  a  receiver;  and  Mc 
Comas's  bank,  after  a  fortnight  of  wobbling, 
righted  itself  and  kept  on  its  way. 

I  saw  Raymond  again  in  March.  The  re 
ceivership  was  going  on  languidly.  Prospects 
were  bright  for  nobody. 

[     158    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

"All  this  puts  an  end  to  one  of  my  plans, 
anyhow,"  he  said. 

"What  plan  is  that?"  I  asked. 

I  was  reminded  that  these  were  also  the 
days  of  a  quickened  interest  in  education.  This 
interest  was  expressing  itself  in  large  new  in 
stitutions,  and  these  institutions  were  gener 
ously  embodying  themselves  in  solid  stone  — 
in  mullions,  groins,  gargoyles,  finials,  and  the 
whole  volume  of  approved  scholastic  detail. 
Donors  were  grouping  themselves  in  "halls" 
and  dormitories  round  a  certain  inchoate 
campus,  and  were  putting  on  the  fronts  of 
their  buildings  their  own  names,  or  the  names 
of  deceased  husbands  or  wives,  fathers  or 
mothers  —  so  many  bids  for  a  monumental 
immortality. 

"I  had  hoped  for  a  Prince  Hall,"  said  Ray 
mond.  And  he  explained  that  it  would  have 
been  in  memory  of  his  parents. 

I  must  pause  for  a  moment  on  this  matter. 
I  do  not  believe  that  Raymond  had  ever 
thought,  in  seriousness,  of  any  such  gift.  It 
must  have  been  at  best  an  errant  fancy,  and 
if  concerned  with  commemorating  anybody 
[  159  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

concerned  with  commemorating  himself.  But 
I  will  say  this  for  him :  he  never  was  disposed 
to  try  getting  things  out  of  people,  for  he 
hated  attempts  at  trickery  almost  as  much  as 
he  detested  the  exercise  of  the  shrewdness  in 
volved  in  bargaining  and  dickering.  Per  con 
tra,  he  often  showed  himself  not  averse  to 
giving  things  to  other  people;  but  the  basis 
for  that  giving  must  be  clearly  understood  all 
round.  He  would  not  compete;  he  would  not 
struggle;  he  would  not  descend  to  a  war  of 
wits.  His  to  bestow,  from  some  serene  height; 
his  the  r61e,  in  fact,  of  the  kindly  patron.  Let 
but  his  own  superiority  be  recognized  —  let 
him  only  be  regarded  as  hors  concours  —  and 
he  would  sometimes  deign  to  do  the  most 
generous  acts.  These  acts  embraced,  now  and 
again,  the  entertainment  of  writers  and  art 
ists,  either  at  his  home  or  elsewhere:  his  fel 
lows  —  for  he  was  a  writer  and  an  artist  too. 
But  it  was  all  done  with  the  understanding 
that  there  was  a  difference:  he  was  a  writer 
and  an  artist  —  but  he  was  something  more. 
Those  who  failed  to  feel  the  difference  were 
not  always  bidden  a  second  time. 
[  160  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

And  his  fancy  for  patronage  was  developing 
just  at  a  time  when  patronage  was  becoming 
more  difficult,  awkward,  impracticable!  But 
though  "Prince  Hall"  never  saw  the  light, 
other  and  humbler  forms  of  patronage  came 
to  be  accepted  by  him. 

Toward  the  end  of  April  Raymond  and 
his  wife  joined  one  of  the  clubs  which  he  had 
brought  to  her  notice.  Though  in  a  formative 
stage,  like  others,  it  was  good  (we  ourselves 
joined  it  some  few  years  later);  and  she 
made  it  her  concern,  through  the  summer, 
to  give  it  some  of  those  shaping  pats  which 
—  for  a  new  club,  as  for  a  new  vase  — 
have  the  greater  value  the  earlier  they  are 
bestowed.  She  was  active  about  the  place, 
and  she  became  conspicuous. 

It  was  soon  seen  that  she  was  "gay"  — 
or  was  inclined  to  be,  under  favoring  condi 
tions.  The  conditions  were  most  favoring,  it 
began  to  be  felt,  when  her  husband  was  not 
about.  A  good  many  thought  him  stiff,  and  a 
few  who  used  obsolete  dictionary  words  pro 
nounced  him  proud  —  a  term  stately  enough 
to  constitute  somehow  a  tribute,  though  a 
[  161  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

damnatory  one.  It  was  soon  seen,  too,  that 
just  as  he  irked  her,  so  she  disparaged  him 
—  an  open  road  to  others. 

One  day  she  gave  a  lunch  at  the  club  — 
places  for  a  dozen.  Johnny  McComas  ap 
peared  there  for  the  first  time.  It  was  a 
plainer  place  than  his  own,  but  I  credit  him 
with  perceiving  that  it  was  much  more  worth 
while.  Adele  McComas  did  not  appear  —  for 
a  good  reason.  Those  obstreperous  twins 
now  had  a  little  sister  two  weeks  old.  The 
wife  was  doubtless  better  at  home,  but  was 
the  husband  better  at  the  club?  If  I  had  been 
a  member  at  that  time,  and  present,  I  should 
have  felt  like  following  him  to  some  corner 
of  the  veranda  and  saying:  "Oh,  come,  now, 
Johnny,  will  this  quite  do?"  Well,  I  know 
what  his  look  would  have  been  —  it  came 
later.  He  would  have  turned  that  wide,  round 
face  on  me,  with  the  curly  hair  about  the 
temples  which  gave  him  somehow  an  expres 
sion  of  abiding  youth  and  frankness;  and  he 
would  have  directed  those  hard,  bright  blue 
eyes  of  his  to  look  straight  ahead  at  me  — 
eyes  that  seemed  to  hold  back  nothing,  yet 
[  162  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

really  told  nothing  at  all;  and  would  have  dis 
claimed  any  wrong-doing  or  any  intention  of 
wrong-doing.  And  I  should  have  felt  myself 
a  foolish  meddler. 

Well,  the  innocent  informalities  of  the  sum 
mer  were  resumed  by  the  same  set  in  town 
next  winter.  The  memories  and  the  methods 
of  one  season  were  tided  over  to  another. 
Gertrude  was  still  "gay"  —  perhaps  gayer 
—  and  a  little  more  openly  impatient  with 
her  husband,  and  a  little  more  openly  dis 
dainful  of  him.  Young  men  swarmed  and 
fluttered,  and  those  who  had  "never  tried  it 
on"  before  seemed  inclined  to  try  it  on  now. 

I  take,  on  the  whole,  a  tempered  view  — 
by  which  I  mean,  a  favorable  view  —  of  our 
society  and  its  moral  tone.  I  am  assured,  and 
I  believe  from  my  own  observations,  that 
this  is  higher  than  in  some  other  of  our  large 
cities.  I  dislike  scandal,  and  I  have  no  desire 
to  bear  tales.  Either  is  far  from  being  the 
object  of  these  present  pages.  Nothing  that 
I  present  need  be  taken  as  typical,  as  tyran- 
nously  representative. 

Raymond  criticized,  expostulated.  Friends 
f  163  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

began  to  come  to  him  with  impressions  and 
reports.  I  —  whether  for  good  or  ill  —  was 
not  one  of  these.  They  named  names  — 
names  which  I  shall  not  record  here.  But 
it  was  one  of  Raymond's  own  impressions, 
and  a  vivid  one,  which  finally  prompted  him 
to  make  a  move. 

IV 

January  found  the  social  life  of  the  town 
in  full  swing.  We  had  recovered  from  last 
year's  financial  jolt,  and  entertaining  was 
constant.  Raymond  and  his  wife  were  in 
vited  out  a  good  deal.  He  was  bored  by  it 
all;  but  his  wife  remained  interested  and  in 
defatigable.  Finally  came  a  dance  at  one  of 
the  great  houses.  Raymond  rebelled,  and 
refused  point-blank  to  go:  an  evening  in  his 
library  was  his  mood.  His  wife  protested, 
cajoled,  and  he  finally  found  a  reason  for 
giving  in. 

As  I  say,  they  were  bidden  to  one  of  the 

great  houses  —  one  of  the  few  that  possessed 

an  actual  fagade,  a  central  court,  and  a  big 

staircase:  it  had  too  its  galleries  of  paintings 

[    164    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

and  of  Oriental  curios  before  Oriental  curios 
became  too  common.  Its  owner  was  also,  with 
the  rest,  a  musical  amateur.  He  was  a  man 
of  forty-five,  and  like  Raymond  had  a  wife 
too  many  years  younger  than  himself  for  his 
own  comfort.  This  lively  lady  lived  on  fiddles 
and  horns  —  dancing  was  an  inexhaustible 
pleasure.  At  her  dancing-parties,  of  which 
she  gave  three  or  four  a  season,  her  husband 
would  show  himself  below  for  a  few  moments 
for  civility's  sake,  and  then  retire  to  a  remote 
den  on  an  upper  floor,  well  shut  out  from  the 
sounds  of  his  wife's  frivolous  measures,  but 
accessible  to  a  few  habitues  of  age  and  tastes 
approximating  his  own. 

The  question  of  music  of  another  quality 
and  to  another  purpose  was  in  the  air  —  it 
was  a  matter  of  endowing  and  housing  an 
orchestra.  Informal  pour-parlers  were  under 
way  in  various  quarters,  and  Raymond  felt 
disposed,  and  even  able,  to  contribute  in  a 
modest  measure.  It  was  his  pride  to  have 
been  asked,  and  it  was  his  pride,  despite  un 
toward  conditions,  to  put  up  a  good  front 
and  do  as  much  as  he  could.  An  hour's  con- 
[  165  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

fab  over  cigarettes  in  that  retired  little  den 
might  clarify  one  atmosphere,  if  not  another. 

The  court  and  its  staircase  were  set  with 
palms,  as  is  the  ineluctable  wont  on  such 
occasions  and  for  such  places;  and  people, 
between  the  dances,  or  during  them,  were 
brushing  the  fronds  aside  as  they  thronged 
the  galleries  round  the  court  to  see  the  Bar- 
bizon  masters  then  in  vogue  and  the  Chinese 
jades.  As  Raymond  passed  down  the  stair 
way,  he  met  his  wife  coming  up  on  the  arm 
of  Johnny  McComas. 

"She  looked  self-conscious,"  Raymond  said 
to  me,  a  few  days  after.  I  told  him  that  he 
had  seen  only  what  he  was  expecting  to  see. 

"And  he  looked  too  beastly  self-satisfied." 
I  told  him  that  of  late  I  had  seldom  seen 
Johnny  look  any  other  way. 

"Where  was  his  wife?"  he  asked.  I  told 
him  she  might  easily  be  in  the  crowd  on  some 
other  man's  arm. 

"Why  were  they  there  at  all?"  he  de 
manded.  And  I  did  not  tell  him  that  prob 
ably  they  were  there  through  his  own  wife's 
good  offices. 

[    166    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

That  meeting  on  the  stairs!  —  he  made  a 
grievance  of  it,  an  injury.  The  earlier  meet 
ing,  with  Johnny's  own  wife  on  his  arm,  had 
annoyed  him  as  a  general  assertion  of  pros 
perity.  This  present  meeting,  with  Raymond 
Prince's  wife  on  Johnny's  arm,  exasperated 
him  as  a  challenging  assertion  of  power  and 
predominance. 

"I  shall  act,"  Raymond  declared. 

"Nothing  rash,"  said  I.  "  Nothing  uncon- 
sidered,  I  hope." 

"I  shall  act,"  he  repeated.  And  he  set 
his  jaw  more  decisively  than  a  strong  man 
always  finds  necessary. 


Raymond's  mind  was  turning  more  and 
more  to  a  set  scene  with  McComas;  some 
meeting  between  them  was,  to  his  notion,  a 
scene  a  faire.  It  seemed  demanded  by  a 
Gallic  sense  of  form :  it  must  be  gone  through 
with  as  a  requisite  to  his  role  of  offended  hus 
band. 

One  difficulty  was  that  Raymond  fluc 
tuated  daily,  almost  hourly,  in  his  view  of  his 
[  167  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

wife  —  of  the  wife,  I  may  say.  To-day  he 
took  the  old  view:  the  wife  was  her  husband's 
property  and  any  attempt  on  her  was  a 
deadly  injury  to  him.  To-morrow  he  took 
the  newer  view:  the  wife  was  an  individual 
human  being  and  a  free  moral  agent;  there 
fore  a  lapse,  while  it  meant  disgrace  for  her, 
was,  for  him,  but  an  affront  which  he  must 
endure  with  dignified  composure. 

Meanwhile  the  pair  saw  little  of  each  other, 
and  Albert,  puzzled,  began  to  enter  upon 
his  opportunity  (a  wide  and  lingering  one  it 
became)  for  learning  adjustment  to  awk 
ward  and  disconcerting  conditions. 

Well,  Raymond  had  his  meeting.  Imagine 
whether  it  was  agreeable.  Imagine  whether  it 
was  agreeable  to  me,  in  whose  office  it  was 
held.  Raymond  had  the  difficult  part  of  one 
who  must  act  because  he  has  deliberately 
committed  himself  to  action,  yet  has  no  sure 
ground  to  act  upon,  and  therefore  no  line  to 
take  with  real  effect.  It  was  here  and  now 
that  McComas  turned  his  round  face  four 
square  to  his  uncertain  accuser,  and  let  loose 
a  steady,  unspeaking  stare  from  those  hard 
[  168  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

blue  eyes,  and  declared  that  nothing  had  oc 
curred  upon  which  an  accusation  could  justly 
be  based.  He  was  emphatic;  and  he  was  blunt; 
the  son  and  grandson  of  a  rustic. 

Nothing,  he  said.  Had  there  really  been 
nothing?  You  are  entitled  to  ask.  And  I 
might  be  inclined  to  answer,  if  I  knew.  I 
simply  don't.  I  was  in  position  to  know  some 
thing,  to  know  much;  but  everything?  —  no. 

Think,  if  you  please,  of  the  many  domestic 
situations  which  must  pass  without  the  full 
light  of  detailed  knowledge  —  knowledge 
that  comes  too  late,  or  never  comes  at  all. 
Consider  the  simple,  willful  girl  who  marries 
impulsively  on  the  assumption  that  the  new 
acquaintance  is  a  bachelor.  Cases  have  been 
known  where  it  developed  that  he  was  not. 
Consider  the  phrase  of  the  marriage  service, 
"if  any  of  you  know  just  cause  or  impedi 
ment":  who  can  declare  that,  in  a  given  in 
stance,  some  impediment,  moral  if  not  legal, 
might  not  be  brought  against  either  contract 
ing  party,  however  trustful  the  other?  Con 
sider  the  story  of  the  anxious  American 
mother  who,  alarmed  by  reports  about  a 
f  169  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

fascinating  scoundrel  under  whom  her  daugh 
ter  was  studying  music  somewhere  in  mid- 
Europe,  went  abroad  alone  to  investigate. 
Her  letter  to  the  awaiting  father,  back  home, 
ran  for  page  after  page  on  non-essentials  and 
dealt  with  the  real  point  only  in  a  brief, 
embarrassed,  bewildered  postscript  of  one 
line:  "Oh,  William,  I  don't  know!"  Neither 
do  I  "know."  But  my  account  of  later 
events  may  help  you  to  decide  the  question 
for  yourselves. 

Raymond  had  set  his  mind  on  a  divorce. 
If  grounds  could  not  be  found  in  one  quarter, 
they  must  be  found  in  another.  If  McComas, 
that  prime  figure,  was  unable  to  bring  aid, 
then  there  must  be  cooperation  among  the 
other  and  lesser  figures.  Raymond  revived 
and  reviewed  the  tales  that  had  involved 
several  younger  men.  The  more  he  dwelt  on 
them,  the  more  inflamed  he  became,  and  the 
more  certain  that  he  had  been  wronged. 

I  did  not  accompany  him  through  his  pro 
ceedings  —  such  advice  as  I  had  given  him 
near  the  beginning  was  the  advice  simply  of 
a  friend.  My  own  part  of  the  great  field  of 
[  170  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

the  law  is  a  relatively  unimpassioned  one  — 
office-work  involving  real-estate,  convey 
ancing,  loans,  and  the  like.  I  suggested  to 
Raymond  the  proper  counsel  for  the  particu 
lar  case,  and  there,  for  a  while,  I  left  him. 

His  wife's  parents  came  on  from  the  East. 
The  mother,  after  some  years  abroad,  had 
lately  resumed  her  domestic  duties  in  the 
land  of  her  birth.  The  father,  who  knew  all 
of  one  subject,  and  nothing  of  any  other,  de 
tached  himself  for  a  week  or  two  from  the  one 
worthy  interest  in  life  and  accompanied  her. 
The  "  street "  was  still  there  when  he  returned. 
They  seemed  experienced  and  worldly-wise 
in  their  respective  fields  and  their  respective 
aspects,  but  they  entered  upon  this  new  mat 
ter  with  a  poor  grace.  Here  was  another 
mother  who  did  not  quite  "know,"  and  an 
other  father  who  waited,  at  a  second  remove, 
for  definite  knowledge  that  did  not  quite 
come.  First  there  were  maladroit  attempts 
to  bring  a  reconciliation;  and  afterwards, 
and  more  shrewdly,  endeavors  to  gain  as 
much  as  possible  for  their  daughter  from  the 
wreck. 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

Raymond  was  determined  to  keep  pos 
session  of  Albert.  Mrs.  McComas,  mother 
of  three,  stoutly  declared  that  the  mother 
should  have  her  child.  Other  women  said 
the  same,  and  maintained  the  point  regard 
less  of  the  mother's  course  or  conduct.  Many 
women  have  said  the  same  in  many  cases, 
and  perhaps  they  are  right.  Perhaps  they 
are  completely  right  in  the  case  of  a  boy  of 
six,  who  surely  needs  a  woman's  care.  But 
it  is  not  difficult,  even  when  material  is  more 
abundant  than  definite,  to  throw  an  atmos 
phere  of  dubiousness  about  a  woman  and  to 
make  it  appear  that  she  is  not  a  "proper  per 
son  .  .  ."  So  it  appeared  to  the  judge  in  this 
case,  and  so  he  ruled  —  with  a  shading,  how 
ever.  Albert  might  spend  with  his  mother 
one  month  every  summer  —  and  some  finan 
cial  concession  on  Raymond's  part  helped 
make  the  time  brief.  However,  she  was  to 
have  nothing  to  say  about  Albert's  mode  of 
life  through  the  rest  of  the  year,  and  nothing 
(more  specifically)  about  his  education. 

"That  makes  him  mine,"  said  Raymond. 

And  he  set  his  lips  firmly.  He  was  one  of 
[  172  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

those  who  set  their  lips  firmly  after  the  event 
is  determined. 

I  do  not  know  whether  Raymond  had  any 
real  affection  for  Albert.  I  do  not  know 
whether  he  realized  what  it  was  for  a  father 
to  undertake,  single  handed,  the  charge  of  a 
boy  of  six.  I  think  that  what  moved  him 
chiefly  was  his  determination  to  carry  a  point. 
However  all  this  may  be,  I  remember  what 
he  said  as,  after  the  decree,  he  walked  out  with 
Albert's  hand  in  his. 

"Well,  it's  over!" 

Over!  —  as  if  a  separation  involving  a 
child  is  ever  "over"! 


PART  VI 
I 

His  domestic  difficulty  left  behind,  Raymond 
settled  down  to  a  middle-aged  life  of  dignity 
and  leisure  —  or  attempted  to.  But  the  trial 
had  rather  shaken  the  dignity,  and  the  sole 
control  of  Albert  ate  into  the  leisure.  There 
followed,  naturally,  a  period  of  restlessness 
and  discontent. 

Those  who  imputed  no  blame  to  Raymond 
still  felt  it  unfortunate,  even  calamitous,  that 
he  should  not  have  learned  how  to  get  on  with 
a  young  wife.  But  there  were  those  that  did 
blame  him  —  blamed  him  for  an  unbending, 
self-satisfied  prig  who  would  have  driven 
almost  any  spirited  young  woman  to  despera 
tion.  These  disparaged  him;  sometimes  — 
not  always  covertly  —  they  ridiculed  him. 
That  hurt  not  only  his  dignity,  but  his  pride. 

Some  of  you  have  perhaps  been  looking  for 
a  generalized  expression  of  general  ideas  — 
for  some  observations  on  marriage  and  divorce 
f  174  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

which  should  have  the  detachable  and  quot 
able  quality  of  epigram.  Yet  suppose  I  were 
to  observe,  just  here,  that  Marriage  makes 
a  promise  to  the  ear  and  breaks  it  to  the  hope; 
or  that  Divorce  is  the  martyr's  crown  after 
the  tortures  of  Incompatibility;  or  that  Mar 
riage  is  the  Inferno,  the  Divorce-Court  the 
Purgatory,  and  Divorce  itself  the  Paradiso 
of  human  life?  You  would  not  be  likely  to 
think  the  better  of  me,  and  I  should  cer 
tainly  think  less  well  of  myself.  Though  I 
am  conscious  of  a  homespun  quality  of 
thought  and  diction,  I  must  keep  within  the 
limits  set  me  by  nature,  eschewing  "bril 
liancy"  and  continuing  to  deal  not  in  ab 
stract  considerations  but  in  concrete  facts. 

Little  Albert  spent  a  good  part  of  his  time 
in  a  condition  of  bewilderment;  he  perceived 
early  that  he  must  not  ask  questions,  that  he 
must  not  try  to  understand.  At  intervals  he 
ran  noisily  through  the  big  house  and  made  it 
seem  emptier  than  ever.  A  nurse,  or  govern 
ess,  or  attendant  of  some  special  qualifica 
tions  was  required  —  even  for  the  short  time 
before  he  should  begin  his  month  with  his 
[  175  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

mother,  who  was  spending  some  months  with 
her  parents  in  the  East.  Even  the  prelim 
inaries  for  this  small  event  occasioned  con 
siderable  thought  and  provoked  a  reluctant 
correspondence.  His  mother  —  prompted 
probably  by  her  own  mother  —  wrote  on  the 
subject  of  Albert's  summer  clothes.  She 
wished  to  buy  most  of  them  herself.  The 
Eastern  climate  in  summer  had  its  special 
points;  also  local  usage  in  children's  cos 
tuming  must  be  considered  —  in  detailed 
appearance  her  child  must  conform  measur 
ably  to  that  particular  juvenile  society  in 
which  he  was  to  appear.  Then  there  was 
the  nurse,  or  governess.  Should  Albert  be 
brought  on  by  her?  And  should  she,  once  in 
the  East,  remain  there  to  take  him  back; 
or  .  .  .? 

"Oh,  the  devil!"  cried  Raymond,  in  his 
library,  as  he  turned  page  after  page  of  dif 
fuse  discourse.  "How  long  is  she  going  to 
run  on?  How  many  more  things  is  she  going 
to  think  of?" 

And  she  had  felt  impelled  to  address  him, 
despite  the  cool  tone  of  her  letter,  as  "Dear 
[  176  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

Raymond."  And  that  seemed  to  put  him 
under  the  compulsion  of  addressing  her,  in 
turn,  as  "Dear  Gertrude"!  Truly,  modes  of 
address  were  scanty,  inadequate. 

Well,  Albert  went  East  (wearing  some  of 
the  disesteemed  things  he  already  possessed) 
to  be  outfitted  for  the  summer  shores  of  New 
Jersey.  His  governess  took  him  as  far  as 
Philadelphia,  where  the  Eastern  connection 
met  him,  and  "poored"  him,  sent  the  woman 
back  home,  and  took  him  out  on  the  shin 
ing  sands.  During  the  child's  absence  she 
made  covers  for  the  drawing-room  sofas  and 
chairs;  the  house,  bereft  of  Albert  and  draped 
in  pale  Holland,  became  more  dismal  than 
ever. 

Raymond,  now  left  alone,  was  free  to  de 
vise  a  way  of  life  in  single  harness.  He  liked 
it  quite  as  well  as  the  other  way.  He  told  him 
self,  and  he  told  me,  that  he  liked  it  even 
better.  I  believe  he  did ;  and  I  believe  he  was 
relieved  by  the  absence  of  Albert,  whose 
little  daily  regimen,  even  when  directed  by 
competent  assistance,  had  begun  to  grind 
into  his  father's  consciousness.  I  even  believe 
[  177  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

that  the  one  serious  drawback  in  Raymond's 
comfortable  summer  was  the  need  of  studying 
over  a  school  for  Albert  in  the  fall. 

Raymond  spent  much  of  his  time  among 
his  books.  He  had  long  since  given  up  try 
ing  to  "write  anything";  less  than  ever  was 
he  in  a  mood  to  try  that  sort  of  exercise  now. 
He  looked  over  his  shelves  and  resolved 
that  he  would  make  up  a  collection  of  books 
for  the  Art  Museum.  They  were  to  be  books 
on  architecture,  of  which  he  had  many.  The 
Museum  library,  with  hundreds  of  archi 
tectural  students  in  and  out,  had  few  vol 
umes  in  architecture,  or  none.  He  visioned 
a  Raymond  Prince  alcove  —  those  boys 
should  be  enabled  to  learn  about  the  Byzan 
tine  buildings,  just  then  coming  into  their 
own;  and  about  the  Renaissance  in  all  its 
varieties,  especially  the  Spanish  Plateresque. 
He  had  a  number  of  expensive  and  elaborate 
publications  which  dealt  with  that  period, 
and  with  others,  and  he  resolved  to  add  new 
works  from  outside.  He  resumed  his  habit 
of  going  to  book-auctions  (though  little  de 
veloped  at  them),  dickered  with  local  dealers 
f  178  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

who  limited  themselves  to  a  choice  clientele, 
and  sent  to  London  for  catalogues  over 
which  he  studied  endlessly.  He  would  still 
play  the  role  of  patron  and  benefactor.  Per 
haps  he  foresaw  the  time  when  the  Museum 
would  recognize  donors  of  a  certain  impor 
tance  by  bronze  memorial  tablets  set  up  in 
its  entrance  hall.  Well,  he  would  make  his 
alcove  important  enough  for  any  measure 
of  recognition.  It  was  all  a  work  which  in 
terested  him  in  its  details  and  which  was 
more  in  correspondence  than  a  larger  one 
with  his  present  means. 

n 

Before  my  wife  and  I  left  for  an  outing  on 
the  seaboard,  news  came  from  that  quarter 
about  Gertrude  and  Albert.  Intelligence 
even  reached  us,  through  the  same  corre 
spondent,  regarding  Mrs.  Johnny  McComas. 
Mrs.  Johnny,  with  her  three  children,  was 
frequenting  the  same  sands  and  the  same 
board  walk.  It  was  possible  to  imagine  the 
arrangement  as  having  been  suggested  by 
Raymond's  one-time  wife.  See  it  for  your- 
I  179  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

self.  Mrs.  Raymond  and  Mrs.  Johnny  slowly 
promenading  back  and  forth  together,  or 
seated  side  by  side  beneath  their  respective 
parasols  or  under  some  gay  awning  shared 
in  common,  while  their  authentic  children 
played  about  them.  What  if  people  — 
whether  friends,  acquaintances,  or  strangers 

—  did  say,  "She  is  divorced"?    There  she 
was,  with  her  own  son  plainly  beside  her  and 
her  closest  woman  friend  giving  her  complete 
countenance.  If  a  separation,  who  to  blame? 
The  husband,  doubtless.    In  fact,  there  was 
already  springing  up  in  her  Eastern  circle, 
I  was  to  find,  the  tradition  of  a  dour,  stiff 
man,  years  too  old,  with  whom  it  was  im 
possible  to  live. 

It  is  unlikely  that  Gertrude,  at  any  time 

—  even    at    this   time  —  would   have   been 
willing  to  rank  Mrs.  Johnny  as  her  closest 
friend.  But  Mrs.  Johnny  had  spoken  a  good 
word  for  her  in  a  trying  season,  and  at  the 
present  juncture  her  friendly  presence  was 
invaluable.    She  could  speak  a  good  word 
now  —  she  was,  so  to  say,  a  continuing  wit 
ness.    The  two,  I  presume,  were  seen  to- 

[    180    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

gether  a  good  deal,  along  with  the  children, 
especially  Albert;  and  Mrs.  Johnny,  cooper 
ating  (if  unconsciously)  with  Gertrude's 
mother,  did  much  to  stabilize  a  somewhat 
uncertain  situation.  : 

It  was  the  understanding  that  Mrs. 
Johnny  was  in  rather  poor  health  this  sum 
mer;  the  birth  of  her  little  daughter  had  left 
her  a  different  woman,  and  the  tonic  of  the 
sea-air  was  needed  to  remake  her  into  her 
high-colored  and  energetic  self.  There  was 
nothing  especially  reviving  in  the  Wiscon 
sin  lakes,  to  which  (placid  inland  ponds) 
they  had  confined  their  previous  summer 
sojourns :  and  the  vogue  of  the  fresher  resorts 
farther  north  on  the  greater  lakes  had  not 
yet  reached  them.  This  year  let  the  salt  surf 
roll  and  the  salt  winds  blow. 

My  wife  and  I,  in  our  Eastern  peregrina 
tions,  passed  a  few  days  at  the  particular 
beach  frequented  by  the  two  mothers.  We 
really  found  in  Mrs.  Johnny's  aspect  and 
carriage  some  justification  for  the  incredible 
legend  of  her  poor  health.  She  walked  with 
less  vigor  than  formerly  and  was  glad  to  sit 
I  181  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

down  more  frequently;  and  once  or  twice 
we  saw  her  taking  the  air  at  her  bedroom 
window  instead  of  on  the  broad  walk  before 
the  shops.  Her  boys  played  robustly  on  the 
sands,  and  would  play  with  Albert  —  or 
rather,  let  him  play  with  them  —  if  urged 
to.  But,  like  most  twins,  they  were  self-suf 
ficing;  besides,  they  were  several  years  older. 
To  produce  the  full  effect  of  team-work  be 
tween  the  families  required  some  persever 
ance  and  a  bit  of  manoeuvring.  The  little 
girl  was  hardly  two. 

Gertrude  and  her  mother  welcomed  us 
rather  emphatically  —  too  emphatically,  we 
felt.  The  latter  offered  us  politic  lunches  in 
the  large  dining-room  of  their  hotel,  and 
laid  great  stress  upon  our  provenance  when 
we  met  her  friends  on  the  promenade.  We 
seemed  to  be  becoming  a  part  of  a  general 
plan  of  campaign  —  pawns  on  the  board. 
This  shortened  our  stay. 

The  day  before  we  left,  Johnny  McComas 

himself  appeared.    He  had  found  a  way  to 

leave  his  widely  ramifying  interests  for  a 

few  odd  hours.  A  man  of  the  right  tempera- 

[    182    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

ment  gains  greatly  by  a  temporary  estival 
transplantation;  and  if  Johnny  always  con 
trived  to  seem  dominant  and  prosperous  at 
home,  he  now  seemed  lordly  and  triumph 
ant  abroad.  He  "dressed  the  part":  he  was 
almost  as  over-appropriately  inappropriate 
as  little  Albert  himself.  He  played  osten 
tatiously  with  his  boys  on  the  sands,  and 
did  not  mind  Albert  as  one  of  their  eye-draw 
ing  party.  He,  whether  his  wife  did  or  no, 
responded  fully  and  immediately  to  the  salt 
waves  and  the  salt  winds. 

"Immense!  isn't  it?"  he  said  to  me, 
throwing  out  his  chest  to  the  breeze  and  tee 
tering  in  his  white  shoes,  out  of  sheer  abun 
dance  of  vitality,  on  the  planks  beneath 
him. 

There  was  only  one  drawback:  his  wife 
was  really  not  well.  And  he  wondered  au 
dibly  to  me,  while  my  own  wife  was  having 
a  few  words  near  by  with  Gertrude,  how  it 
was  that  a  young  woman  could,  within  the 
first  year  of  her  married  life,  bear  twins  with 
no  hurt  or  harm,  and  yet  weaken,  later, 
through  the  birth  of  a  single  child. 
[  183  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

"She  doesn't  seem  at  all  lively,  that's  a 
fact,"  he  said,  with  a  possible  touch  of  im 
patience.  "But  another  two  weeks  will  do 
wonders  for  her,"  he  added:  "she'll  go  back 
all  right." 

Prepotent  Johnny!  No  doubt  it  was  a 
drain  on  vitality  to  live  abreast  of  such  a 
man,  to  keep  step  with  his  robustious  stride. 

On  the  forenoon  of  the  day  we  left,  Johnny 
was  walking  with  Gertrude  and  her  mother 
along  the  accepted  promenade.  His  excess 
of  vitality  and  of  action  gave  him  an  air  of 
gallantry  not  altogether  pleasing  to  see.  His 
wife  sat  at  her  window,  looking  down  and 
waving  her  hand  rather  languidly.  The 
Johnny  of  her  belief  had  come,  in  part,  as 
suredly,  for  a  bit  of  enjoyment.  She  smiled 
unconcernedly. 

in 

Raymond  waited  back  home  for  Albert, 
and  Albert  did  not  return.  We  gathered 
from  a  newspaper  published  near  the  shores 
of  Narragansett  Bay  that  Albert,  as  his 
mother's  triumphant  possession,  was  now 
[  184  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

being  shown  at  another  resort  —  and  a  more 
important  one,  judging  by  his  grandmother's 
social  affiliations;  also,  that  Mrs.  McComas, 
who  had  not  done  any  too  well  on  the  Jer 
sey  shore,  was  appearing  at  the  new  plage 
—  doubtless  as  the  just  and  sympathetic 
friend  (of  social  prominence  in  her  own 
community)  who  had  stood  stanch  through 
difficulties  unjustly  endured.  Her  hus 
band  himself  had,  of  course,  returned  to  the 
West. 

His  business  called  him,  even  in  midsum 
mer.  He  had  his  bank,  but  he  had  more  than 
his  bank.  There  are  banks  and  banks  — 
you  can  divide  them  up  in  several  different 
ways.  There  are,  of  course,  —  as  we  have 
seen,  —  the  banks  that  fail,  and  the  banks 
that  do  not.  And  there  are  the  banks  that 
exist  as  an  end  in  themselves,  and  the  banks 
that  exist  as  a  means  to  other  things:  those 
that  function  along  methodically,  without 
taking  on  any  extraneous  features;  and  those 
that  serve  as  a  nucleus  for  accumulating 
interests,  as  a  fulcrum  to  move  affairs 
through  a  wide  and  varied  range.  Of  tmY 
[  185  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

kind  was  McComas's.  Johnny  was  not  the 
man  to  stand  still  and  let  routine  take  its 
way  —  not  the  man  to  mark  time,  even 
through  the  vacation  season.  Nor  could  he 
have  done  so  even  if  he  had  wanted  to.  But 
all  I  need  say,  just  here,  is  that  he  came 
back  home  again  after  three  or  four  days,  all 
told,  and  that  any  threatened  embarassment 
was  nullified,  or  at  least  postponed. 

Raymond  heard  in  silence  my  account  of 
the  doings  on  the  Atlantic  shore :  only  a  wry 
twist  of  the  mouth  and  a  flare  of  the  nostrils. 
But  as  the  weeks  went  on,  and  still  no  Albert, 
his  anger  became  articulate. 

"I  shall  teach  her  that  an  agreement  is 
an  agreement,"  he  declared.  "She  will  never 
try  this  again." 

Albert  finally  came  home,  three  weeks 
late;  his  mother  brought  him  herself.  The 
governess  transferred  him  from  the  hands 
of  one  parent  to  those  of  the  other;  and 
Raymond  had  asked  my  presence  for  that 
moment,  as  a  sort  of  moral  urge. 

"Who  knows,"  he  asked,  "what  delay 
she  may  try  for  next?" 

[    186    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

He  gave  one  look  at  the  picturesque,  if  not 
fantastic,  toggery  of  his  restored  child. 

"Did  you  ever  see  anything  like  that?" 
he  said  scornfully;  and  I  foresaw  a  sacrificial 
bonfire  —  or  its  equivalent  —  with  Albert 
presently  clothed  in  sane  autumn  garb. 

Albert  was  followed,  within  a  week,  by 
a  letter  from  his  mother.  This  was  diffuse 
and  circumlocutory,  like  the  first.  But  its 
general  sense  was  clear.  If  Raymond  was 
thinking  of  putting  Albert  into  a  boarding- 
school  .  .  . 

"There  she  goes  again!"  exclaimed  the 
exacerbated  father.  "A  matter  with  which, 
by  hard-and-fast  agreement,  she  has  abso 
lutely  nothing  to  do!" 

However,  if  he  was  thinking  of  a  boarding- 
school  .  .  . 

"A  child  barely  seven!"  cried  Raymond. 
"Why,  half  of  them  will  hardly  consider  one 
of  eight!" 

Still,  if  he  was  thinking  —  well,  Mrs.  Mc- 
Comas  knew  of  a  charming  one,  an  old-es 
tablished  one,  one  in  which  the  head-master's 
wife,  a  delightful,  motherly  soul  .  .  .  And  it 
[  187  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

was  just  within  the  Wisconsin  line,  not  forty 
miles  from  town  .  .  . 

"I  see  her  camping  at  the  gate!"  said  Ray 
mond  bitterly.  "Or  taking  a  house  there. 
Or  spending  months  at  a  hotel  near  by.  Con 
stantly  fussing  round  the  edge  of  things. 
Running  in  on  every  visitors'  day  .  .  ." 

"Likely  enough,"  I  said.  "A  mother's  a 
mother." 

"Well,"  rejoined  Raymond,  "the  boy  shall 
go  to  school  —  in  another  year.  But  the 
school  will  be  a  good  deal  more  than  forty 
miles  from  here  —  no  continual  week-end 
trips.  And  it  will  not  be  in  a  town  that  has 
an  endurable  hotel  —  that  ought  to  be  easy 
to  arrange,  in  this  part  of  the  world.  No, 
it  won't  be  near  any  town  at  all.  I  don't 
suppose  she  would  take  a  —  tent?"  he 
queried  sardonically. 

"To  some  mothers  the  blue  tent  of  heaven 
would  alone  suffice,"  I  said  —  perhaps  un 
worthily. 

"Rubbish!"  he  ejaculated;  and  I  felt  that 
a  word  fitly  spoken  —  or  perhaps  unfittingly 
—  was  rebuked. 

I    188    1 


ON  THE  STAIKS 

IV 

In  due  season,  Albert  went  off  to  school, 
according  to  his  father's  plans;  and  it  was 
not  the  school  which  Adele  McComas  had 
hoped  to  see  Albert  enter  a  little  before  her 
own  boys  should  leave  it.  Raymond,  after 
another  year  of  daily  attentions  to  Albert's 
small  daily  concerns,  was  glad  to  have  him 
away.  He  did  not  see  his  boy's  mother  a 
frequent  visitor  at  this  school,  nor  did  he 
purpose  being  a  frequent  visitor  himself. 
The  establishment  was  approved,  well-rec 
ommended:  let  it  do  its  work  unaided,  un 
hindered. 

No,  Adele  McComas  never  saw  Albert 
at  the  school  of  her  predilection;  indeed,  it 
was  not  long  after  the  choice  had  been  made 
that  she  lost  all  opportunity  of  seeing  any 
thing  at  all.  She  withered  out,  like  a  high- 
colored,  hardy-seeming  flower  that  belies  all 
promise,  and  died  when  her  little  girl  was 
months  short  of  four. 

Her  name  was  on  the  new  monument  with 
in  six  weeks.  It  was  the  third  name.  That 
[  189  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

of  Johnny's  father  had  lately  been  placed 
above  that  of  his  mother,  and  that  of  his 
wife  was  now  clearly  legible  upon  the  oppo 
site  side  of  the  shaft's  base.  Some  of  John 
ny's  friends  saw  in  this  promptitude  a  high 
mark  of  respect  and  affection;  others  felt 
a  haste,  almost  undue,  to  turn  the  new  erec 
tion  into  a  bulletin  of  "actualities";  and  a 
few  surmised  that  had  the  work  not  been 
done  with  promptitude  it  might  have  come 
to  be  done  in  a  leisurely  fashion  that  spelled 
neglect :  if  it  were  to  be  done,  't  were  well  it 
were  done  quickly  —  a  formal  token  of  re 
gard  checked  off  and  disposed  of. 

During  Albert's  first  year  at  his  school 
his  mother  made  two  or  three  appearances. 
She  was  exigent,  and  she  showed  herself  to 
the  school  authorities  as  fertile  in  blandish 
ments.  The  last  of  her  visits  was  made  in 
a  high-powered  touring-car.  Raymond  heard 
of  this,  and  warned  the  school  head  against 
a  possible  attempt  at  abduction. 

The  second  year  opened  more  quietly.  One 
visit  —  a  visit  without  eagerness  and  obvi 
ously  lacking  in  any  fell  intent,  and  that  was 
f  190  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

all.  It  was  fair  to  surmise  that  this  once- 
urgent,  once- vehement  mother  had  developed 
a  newer  and  more  compelling  interest. 

She  had  made  herself  a  figure  at  Adele 
McComas's  funeral  —  or,  at  least,  others  had 
made  her  a  figure  at  it.  She  began  to  be 
seen  here  and  there  in  the  company  of  the 
widower,  and  it  was  reported  privately  to  me 
that  she  had  been  perceived  standing  side  by 
side  with  him  in  decorous  contemplation,  as 
it  were  in  a  sort  of  transient,  elegiac  revery 
a  deux,  before  the  monument.  It  was  no  sur 
prise,  therefore,  when  we  heard,  two  months 
later,  that  they  had  married. 

"  That  stable-boy ! "  said  Raymond.  "After 
—  me!" 

The  expression  was  strong,  and  I  did  not 
care  to  assent. 

Instead,  I  began:  — 

"And  now,  whatever  may  or  may  not  have 
been,  everything  is  — " 

"  Everything  is  right,  at  last ! "  he  concluded 
for  me. 

"And  if  they  —  those  two  —  are  put  in  the 
right,"  he  went  on,  "I  suppose  I  am  put  in 

I    191    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

the  wrong  —  and  more  in  the  wrong  than 
ever!" 

He  stared  forward,  across  his  littered  table, 
beyond  his  bookcases,  through  his  thick- 
lensed  glasses,  as  if  confronting  the  stiffening 
legend  of  a  husband  too  old,  too  dry,  too  un- 
pliable;  the  victim,  finally,  of  a  sudden  turn 
that  was  peculiarly  malapropos  and  disrel 
ishing,  the  head  of  a  household  tricked  rather 
ridiculously  before  the  world. 

Reserve  now  began  to  grow  on  him.  He 
simplified  relationships  and  saw  fewer  peo 
ple.  Before  these,  and  before  the  many  at 
a  greater  remove,  he  would  maintain  a  cau 
tious  dignity  as  a  detached  and  individual 
human  creature,  as  a  man,  —  however  much, 
in  the  world's  eyes,  he  might  have  seemed  to 
fail  as  a  husband. 

V 

John  W.  McComas,  at  forty-five,  was  in 
apogee.  His  bank,  as  I  have  said,  was  coming 
to  be  more  than  a  mere  bank;  it  was  now  the 
focus  of  many  miscellaneous  enterprises.  Sev 
eral  of  these  were  industrial  companies;  pros- 
[  192  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

pectuses  bearing  his  name  and  that  of  his 
institution  constantly  came  my  way.  Some 
of  these  undertakings  were  novel  and  daring, 
but  most  of  them  went  through;  and  he  was 
more  likely  to  use  his  associates  than  they 
were  to  use  him.  As  I  have  said,  he  possessed 
but  two  interests  in  the  world :  his  business  — 
now  his  businesses  —  and  his  family;  and  he 
concentrated  on  both.  It  might  be  said  that 
he  insisted  on  the  most  which  each  would 
yield. 

He  concentrated  on  his  new  domestic  life 
with  peculiar  intensity.  His  boys  were  away 
at  a  preparatory  school  and  were  looking  for 
ward  to  college.  He  centred  on  his  daughter, 
a  future  hope,  and  on  his  wife,  a  present  real 
ity  and  triumph.  Over  her,  in  particular,  he 
bent  like  a  flame,  a  bright  flame  that  dazzled 
and  did  not  yet  sear.  He  was  able,  by  this 
time,  to  coalesce  with  the  general  tradition 
in  which  she  had  been  brought  up  —  or  at 
least  with  the  newer  tradition  to  which  she 
had  adjusted  herself;  and  he  was  able  to  bring 
to  bear  a  personal  power  the  application  of 
which  she  had  never  experienced.  She  found 
[  193  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

herself  handled  with  decision.  She  almost 
liked  it  —  at  least  it  simplified  some  teasing 
problems.  He  employed  a  direct,  bluff, 
hearty  kindness;  but  strength  underlay  the 
kindness,  and  came  first  —  came  uppermost 

—  if  occasion  seriously  required.    Life  with 
Raymond  had  been  a  laxative,  when  not  an 
irritant;  life  with  Johnny  McComas  became 
a  tonic.    She  had  felt  somewhat  loose  and 
demoralized;  now  she  felt  braced. 

Johnny  was  rich,  and  was  getting  richer  yet. 
He  was  richer,  much,  than  he  had  been  but  a 
few  years  before;  richer  than  Raymond  Prince, 
whose  worldly  fortunes  seemed  rather  to  dip. 
Johnny  could  give  his  wife  whatever  she  fan 
cied;  when  she  hesitated,  things  were  urged 
upon  her,  forced  upon  her.  She,  in  her  turn, 
was  now  a  delegate  of  luxury.  He  approved 

—  and  insisted  upon  —  a  showy,  emphatic 
way  of  life,  and  a  more  than  liberal  scale  of 
expenditure.    He  wanted  to  show  the  world 
what  he  could  do  for  a  fine  woman;  and  I  be 
lieve  he  wanted  to  show  Raymond  Prince. 

Gossip  had  long  since  faded  away  to  noth 
ingness.   If  anybody  had  wondered  at  John- 
[    194    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

ny's  course  —  a  course  that  had  run  through 
possible  dubiousness  to  hard-and-fast  final 
ity —  the  wonder  was  now  inaudible.  If 
anybody  felt  in  him  a  lack  of  fastidiousness, 
the  point  was  not  pressed.  The  marriage 
seemed  a  happy  solution,  on  the  whole;  and 
the  people  most  concerned  —  those  who 
met  the  new  pair  —  appeared  to  feel  that  a 
problem  was  off  the  board  and  glad  to  have 
it  so. 

Raymond,  on  the  eve  of  the  marriage,  had 
softened  things  for  himself  by  leaving  for  a 
few  months  in  Rome.  Back,  he  began  to  cast 
about  for  some  means  of  occupation  and 
some  way  of  making  a  careful  assertion  of  his 
dignity.  At  this  time  "society"  was  begin 
ning  to  sail  more  noticeably  about  the  edge 
of  the  arts,  and  an  important  coterie  was 
feeling  that  something  might  well  be  done  to 
lift  the  drama  from  its  state  of  degradation. 
Why  not  build  —  or  remodel  —  a  theatre,  they 
asked,  form  a  stock  company,  compose  a  rep 
ertory,  and  see  together  a  series  of  such  per 
formances  as  might  be  viewed  without  a  total 
departure  from  taste  and  intelligence? 

[    195    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

The  experiment  ran  its  own  quaint  course. 
The  remodeling  of  the  hall  chosen  introduced 
the  sponsors  of  the  movement  to  the  fire-laws 
and  resulted  in  a  vast,  unlooked-for  expense. 
A  good  company  —  though  less  stress  was  laid 
on  its  roster  than  on  the  list  of  guarantors  — 
went  astray  in  the  hands  of  a  succession  of 
directors,  not  always  competent.  The  sub 
scribers  refused  to  occupy  their  boxes  more 
than  one  night  a  week,  and,  later  on,  not  even 
that:  the  space  was  filled  for  a  while  with 
servitors  and  domestic  dependents,  and  pres 
ently  by  nobody  ...  $ 

Raymond  went  into  the  enterprise.  He 
put  in  a  goodly  sum  of  money  that  never  came 
back  to  him;  and  if  he  cooperated  but  indif 
ferently,  or  worse,  he  was  not  more  inept  than 
some  of  his  associates.  He  was  displeased  to 
learn  that  the  McComases  had  given  enough 
to  the  guarantee-fund  to  insure  them  a  box. 
And  it  offended  him  that,  on  the  opening 
night,  his  former  wife,  one  of  a  large  and  as 
sertive  party,  should  make  her  voice  heard 
during  intermissions  (and  at  some  other  times 
too)  quite  across  the  small  auditorium.  The 
[  196  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

situation  was  generally  felt  to  be  piquant, 
and  at  the  end  of  the  performance  people, 
in  the  lobby  were  amused  (save  the  few 
who  had  the  affair  greatly  at  heart)  to  hear 
Johnny  McComas's  comment  on  the  play. 
It  was  a  far-fetched  problem-play  from  the 
German,  and  Raymond  had  been  one  of 
those  who  favored  it  for  an  opening. 

"Did  you  ever  see  such  a  play  in  your  life?  " 
queried  Johnny.  "What  was  it  all  about? 
And  was  n't  he  the  fool!" 

McComas  —  really  caring  nothing  for  the 
evening's  entertainment  either  way  —  could 
easily  afford  a  large  amount  for  social  prestige, 
and  his  wife  for  general  social  consolidation. 
It  was  little  to  Johnny  that  his  thousands 
went  up  in  exacting  systems  of  ventilation 
and  in  salaries  for  an  expensive  staff;  but  it 
was  awkward  for  Raymond  to  lose  a  sum 
which,  while  absolutely  less,  was  relatively 
much  greater.  After  a  few  months  the  scheme 
was  dropped;  the  expensive  installation  went 
to  the  advantage  of  a  vaudeville  manager; 
Raymond  felt  poorer,  even  slightly  crippledr 
and  the  voice  of  the  present  Mrs.  Johnnj 
[  197  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

McComas  ran  till  the  end  across  that  tiny 
salle. 

This,  I  am  glad  to  say,  was  the  last  of 
Raymond's  endeavors  to  patronize  the  arts. 

VI 

Albert's  last  year  at  his  distant  school 
ended  rather  abruptly.  He  came  home,  ail 
ing,  about  a  month  before  the  close  of  the 
school  year.  He  was  thin  and  languid.  He 
may  have  been  growing  too  fast;  he  may  have 
been  studying  too  hard;  he  may  have  missed 
the  "delightful  motherly  soul"  who  would 
have  brooded  over  him  at  the  school  first 
proposed;  or  the  drinking-water  may  have 
been  infected  —  que  sais-je  ?  Well,  Albert 
moped  during  much  of  May  through  the  big 
house,  and  his  mother  heard  of  his  return  and 
his  moping,  made  the  most  of  it,  and  insisted 
on  a  visitation. 

The  child-element,  of  late,  had  not  been 
large  in  her  life.  Her  two  tall  stepsons  were 
flourishing  in  absence;  she  had  had  no  sec 
ond  child  of  her  own;  little  Althea  was  nice 
enough,  and  she  liked  her  pretty  well  .  .  . 
[  198  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

But  there  was  her  own  flesh  and  blood  cry 
ing  for  her  —  perhaps.  So  she  descended  on 
the  old,  familiar  interior  —  familiar  and  dis 
tasteful  —  and  resumed  with  zeal  the  r61e  of 
mother. 

Her  presence  was  awkward,  anomalous. 
The  servants  were  disconcerted,  and  scarcely 
knew  how  to  take  her  fluttery  yet  imperious 
orders.  For  Raymond  himself,  as  any  one 
could  see,  it  was  all  purgatory  —  or  worse. 
Every  room  had  its  peculiar  and  disagreeable 
memories.  There  was  the  chamber-threshold 
over  which  they  had  discussed  her  tendency 
to  out-mode  the  mode  and  to  push  every  ex 
treme  of  fashion  to  an  extreme  still  more  dar 
ing —  for  that  black  gown  with  spangles,  or 
whatever,  had  been  but  the  first  of  a  long, 
flagrant  line.  There  was  the  particular  spot 
in  the  front  hall,  before  that  monumental,  old- 
fashioned,  black- walnut  "hat-rack,"  where 
he  had  cautioned  more  care  in  her  attitude 
toward  young  bachelors,  if  only  in  considera 
tion  of  his  own  dignity,  his  "face."  There 
was  the  dining-room  —  yes,  she  stayed  to 
meals,  of  course,  and  to  many  of  them!  — 

[    199    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

where  (in  the  temporary  absence  of  service) 
he  had  criticized  more  than  once  the  details 
of  her  housekeeping  and  of  her  menu  —  had 
told  her  just  how  he  "wanted  things"  and 
how  he  meant  to  have  them.  And  in  each 
case  she  had  pouted,  or  scoffed,  and  had  con 
trived  somehow  to  circumvent  him,  to  thwart 
him,  and  to  get  with  well-cloaked,  or  with 
uncloaked,  insistence  her  own  way.  Heavenly 
recollections!  He  felt,  too,  from  her  various 
glances  and  shrugs,  that  the  house  was  more 
of  a  horror  to  her  than  ever,  and,  above  all, 
that  abominable  orchestrion  more  hugely  pre 
posterous. 

Albert  kept  mostly  to  his  room.  It  was  the 
same  room  which  Raymond  himself  had  oc 
cupied  as  a  boy.  It  had  the  same  view  of  that 
window  above  the  stable  at  which  Johnny 
McComas  had  sorted  his  insects  and  arranged 
his  stamps.  The  stable  was  now,  of  course, 
a  garage;  but  the  time  was  on  the  way  when 
both  car  and  chauffeur  would  be  dispensed 
with.  Parallel  wires  still  stretched  between 
house  and  garage,  as  an  evidence  of  Ray 
mond's  endeavor  to  fill  in  the  remnant  of 
[  200  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

Albert's  previous  vacation  with  some  enter 
taining  novelty  that  might  help  wipe  out  his 
recollection  of  the  month  lately  spent  with  his 
mother.  Albert  was  modern  enough  to  prefer 
wireless  —  just  then  coming  in  —  to  "bugs" 
and  postage-stamps;  but  the  time  remaining 
had  been  short.  Besides,  Albert  liked  the  the 
atre  better;  and  Raymond,  during  those  last 
weeks  in  August,  had  sat  through  many  woe 
ful  and  stifling  performances  of  vaudeville 
that  he  might  regain  and  keep  his  hold  on  his 
son.  His  presence  at  these  functions  was  ob 
served  and  was  commented  upon  by  several 
persons  who  were  aware  of  the  aid  he  was 
giving  for  a  bettered  stage. 

"Fate's  irony! "  he  himself  would  sometimes 
say  inwardly,  with  a  sidelong  glance  at  Al 
bert,  preoccupied  with  knockabouts  or  trained 
dogs. 

Albert  spent  some  of  his  daylight  hours  in 
bed;  some  in  moving  about  the  room  spirit 
lessly.  He  looked  out  with  lack-lustre  eyes 
at  the  sagging  wires,  and  seemed  to  be  won 
dering  how  they  could  ever  have  interested 
him.  His  mother,  as  soon  as  she  saw  him,  put 
[  201  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

him  at  death's  door  —  at  least  she  saw  him 
headed  straight  for  that  dark  portal.  She 
began  to  insist,  after  a  few  days,  that  he  go 
home  with  her:  he  would  be  hers,  by  right, 
within  a  fortnight,  anyhow.  Her  new  house, 
she  declared,  would  be  an  immensely  better 
place  for  him,  and  would  immensely  help 
him  to  get  well,  if  —  with  a  half -sob  —  he 
ever  was  to  get  well. 

She  knew,  of  course,  the  early  legend  of 
Johnny  McComas,  and  had  no  wish  to  linger 
in  its  locale. 

"You  do  want  to  go  with  your  own,  own 
mother  —  don't  you,  dear? " 

"Yes,"  replied  Albert  faintly. 

The  town-house  of  Johnny  McComas, 
bought  at  an  open-eyed  bargain  and  on  a 
purely  commercial  basis,  had  some  time 
since  fulfilled  its  predestined  function.  It  had 
been  taken  over,  at  a  very  good  price,  by  an 
automobile  company;  the  purchasers  had  be 
gun  to  tear  it  down  before  the  last  load  of 
furniture  was  fairly  out,  and  had  quickly  run 
up  a  big  block  in  russet  brick  and  plate  glass. 
Gertrude  McComas  had  had  no  desire  to 
[  202  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

inherit  memories  of  her  predecessor;  if  she 
had  not  urged  the  promptest  action  her  hus 
band's  plan  might  have  given  him  a  still  more 
gratifying  profit. 

They  had  built  their  new  house  out  on  the 
North  Shore.  At  one  time  the  society  of  that 
quarter  had  seemed,  however  desirable  to 
the  McComases,  somewhat  inaccessible.  But 
the  second  wife  was  more  likely  to  help  Johnny 
thitherward  than  the  first.  Besides,  the  par 
ticipation  of  the  new  pair  in  the  scheme  of 
dramatic  uplift  —  however  slight,  essentially 
— had  made  the  promised  land  nearer  and 
brighter.  They  might  now  transplant  them 
selves  to  that  desired  field  with  a  certainty 
of  some  few  social  relations  secured  in  ad 
vance. 

They  had  a  long-reaching,  rough-cast 
house,  in  a  semi-Spanish  style,  high  above 
the  water.  They  had  ten  acres  of  lawn  and 
thicket.  They  had  their  own  cow.  And  there 
was  little  Althea  —  a  nice  enough  child  — 
for  a  playmate. 

"Let  me  get  Albert  away  from  all  this 
smoke  and  grime, "  his  mother  pleaded  —  or 
[    203    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

argued  —  or  demanded,  dramatically.  "Let 
me  give  him  the  pure  country  air.  Let  me 
give  him  the  right  things  to  eat  and  drink. 
Let  me  look  after  his  poor  little  clothes, 
—  if"  (with  another  half -sob)  "he  is  ever 
to  wear  them  again.  Let  me  give  him  a  real 
mother's  real  care.  You  would  like  that 
better,  wouldn't  you,  dear?" 

"Yes,"  said  Albert  faintly. 

It  is  quite  possible,  of  course,  that  his 
school  really  had  scanted  the  motherly  touch. 

"You  see  how  it  goes!"  Raymond  finally 
said  to  me,  one  evening,  in  the  shadow  of 
the  orchestrion.  "And  what  she  will  dress 
him  in  this  time  .  .  . ! " 

The  whole  situtation  wore  on  him  hor 
ribly.  There  was  a  light  play  over  his  cheeks 
and  jaws:  I  almost  heard  his  teeth  grit. 

A  few  days  later  Albert  was  transferred 
to  his  mother's  place  in  the  country.  Ray 
mond  consoled  himself  as  best  he  might  with 
the  thought  that  this  sojourn  was,  after  all, 
but  preliminary,  as  Gertrude  had  herself  im 
plied,  to  the  coming  month  on  the  Maine  coast 
or  at  Mackinac.  A  change  of  air,  a  greater 
[  204  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

change  of  air,  a  change  to  an  air  immensely 
and  unmistakably  and  immediately  tonic 
and  upbuilding  —  that,  as  his  mother  stated, 
with  emphasis,  was  what  Albert  required. 

So  Albert,  by  way  of  introduction  to  his 
real  summer,  came  to  be  domiciled  under  the 
splendid  new  roof  of  Johnny  McComas  —  a 
roof,  to  Raymond's  exacerbated  sense,  gleam 
ing  but  heavy.  Its  tiles  —  he  had  not  seen 
them,  but  he  readily  visualized  them  —  bore 
him  down.  He  was  not  obliged,  as  yet,  to 
meet  McComas  himself.  That  came  later. 


PART  VII 
I 

ALBERT  recovered  in  due  season  —  a  little 
more  rapidly,  it  may  be,  than  if  he  had 
stayed  with  his  father,  but  not  more  com 
pletely.  His  education  progressed,  entering 
another  phase,  and  still  with  the  unauthor 
ized  cooperation  of  his  mother.  During  his 
stay  with  her  she  had  really  wrought  no  great 
havoc  in  his  wardrobe,  whatever  she  may 
have  accomplished  on  a  previous  occasion. 
In  fact,  Albert  had  reached  the  point  where 
he  dressed  in  a  manlier  fashion  —  a  fashion 
fortunately  standardized  beyond  a  mother's 
whims.  In  his  turn,  as  it  had  been  with  his 
brothers  by  marriage,  it  was  now  the  real 
preparatory  school,  with  college  looming 
ahead. 

By  this  time  Raymond    had  completely 

made  his  belated  adieux  to  aesthetic  concerns 

and  had  begun  to  concentrate  on  practical 

matters  —  on   his   own.     They   needed   his 

[    206    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

attention,  even  if  he  had  not  the  right  qual 
ity  of  attention  to  give.  I  had  my  doubts, 
and  they  did  not  grow  less  as  time  went  on. 
Raymond  was  now  within  hail  of  fifty,  and 
he  added  to  his  long  list  of  earlier  mistakes 
a  new  mistake  peculiar  to  his  years  and  to 
his  training  —  or  his  lack  of  it. 

Briefly,  he  assumed  that  age  in  itself 
brought  knowledge,  and  that  young  men  in 
their  twenties  —  even  their  late  twenties — • 
were  but  boys.  The  disadvantage  of  hold 
ing  this  view  became  apparent  when  he  be 
gan  to  do  business  with  them.  He  depended 
too  much  on  his  own  vague  fund  of  experi 
ence,  and  did  not  realize  how  dangerous  it 
might  be  to  encounter  keen  specialists  — • 
however  young  —  in  their  own  field.  He 
was  now  engaged  in  a  general  recasting  of 
his  affairs,  and  they  came  to  him  in  numbers 
—  bright,  boyish,  young  fellows,  he  called 
them.  He  tended  to  patronize  them,  and 
he  began  to  deal  with  them  rather  infor 
mally  and  much  too  confidently. 

The  family  bank,  after  languishing  along 
for  a  liberal  time  under  its  receiver,  had  been 
[  207  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

wound  up,  and  the  stockholders,  among 
whom  he  was  a  large  one  but  far  from  the 
largest,  accepted  the  results  and  turned  wry 
faces  to  new  prospects  elsewhere.  The  fam 
ily  holdings  of  real-estate,  on  the  edge  of  the 
central  district  rather  than  in  it,  did  not 
share  the  general  and  almost  automatic  ad 
vance  in  values,  and  an  uncertain,  slow- 
moving  scheme  for  a  general  public  improve 
ment  —  one  that  continually  promised  to 
eventuate  yet  continually  held  off  —  had 
kept  one  of  his  warehouses  vacant  for  years: 
its  only  income  was  contributed  by  an  ad 
vertising  company,  which  utilized  part  of 
its  front  as  a  bulletin-board.  Rents  in  this 
quarter  kept  down,  though  taxes  —  more 
through  rising  rates  than  increased  valuations 
—  went  up.  And  those  two  big  old  houses! 
Raymond  still  lived,  too  expensively  in  one, 
and  paid  interest  on  a  cumbering  old  mort 
gage.  The  other  —  old  Jehiel's  —  was  rented, 
at  no  great  advantage,  to  a  kind  of  corre 
spondence  school  which  conducted  dubious 
courses  and  was  precarious  pay. 

In  such  circumstances  Raymond  began  to 
[    208    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

lend  an  ear  to  offers  of  "real-estate  trades" 
and  to  suggestions  for  reinvestments.  But 
real-estate,  in  which  almost  everybody  had 
once  dabbled  (with  advantage  assumed  and 
usually  realized),  had  now  become  a  game  for 
experts.  Profits  for  the  few :  disaster  —  or  at 
least  disillusionment  —  for  the  many.  Ray 
mond  thought  he  could  "exchange"  to  ad 
vantage,  and  the  bright  young  men  (who 
knew  what  they  were  about  much  better 
than  he  did)  flocked  to  help  him.  Well,  one 
man  in  a  hundred  exchanges  with  profit;  the 
ninety-and-nine,  the  further  they  go  the 
more  they  lose  —  onions  peeled  coat  by 
coat.  Thus  Raymond,  until  I  heard  of  some 
of  his  operations  and  tried  to  stop  them. 
One  frank-faced,  impudent  young  chap,  who 
thought  he  was  secure  in  a  contract,  I  had 
to  frighten  off;  but  others  had  preceded  him. 
Investments  were  offered  him  too :  schemes 
in  town,  and  schemes  —  bolder  and  more 
numerous  —  out  of  town.  Some  of  these 
had  the  support  of  McComas  and  his 
"crowd,"  and  turned  out  advantageously 
enough,  for  those  on  the  "inside"  —  to 
[  209  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

continue  the  jargon  of  the  day  and  its  inter 
ests;  but  Raymond  sensitively,  even  fastidi 
ously,  stepped  away  from  these,  and  trusted 
himself,  rather,  to  financial  free  lances  who 
often  were  not  only  without  principle,  but 
also  without  definite  foothold. 

"If  you  would  only  consult  me!"  more 
than  once  I  had  occasion  to  remonstrate. 
"Who  are  these  people?  What  organization 
have  they  got  —  what  responsibility?" 

But  though  he  would  dicker  with  strangers, 
who  took  hours  of  his  time  with  their  specious 
palaverings,  he  shrank  more  and  more  from 
his  own  tenants  and  his  own  agents.  One 
rather  important  lease  had  to  be  renewed 
over  his  head  —  or  behind  his  back.  Still, 
I  do  not  know  that,  on  this  particular  occa 
sion,  his  interests  greatly  suffered. 

Thus  Raymond  began  to  approach  a  per 
manent  impairment  of  his  affairs  at  an  age 
when  recuperation  for  a  man  of  his  defi 
ciencies  was  as  good  as  out  of  the  question. 
Further  on  still  he  began  to  suspect  —  even 
to  realize  —  that  he  was  unfitted  to  cope 
with  adults.  In  his  later  fifties  he  began  to 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

pat  children  on  their  heads  in  parks  and  to 
rub  the  noses  of  horses  in  the  streets.  With 
the  younger  creatures  of  the  human  race  and 
with  the  gentler  orders  of  the  brute  creation 
he  felt  he  could  trust  himself ,  and  still  escape 
disaster.  If  he  found  little  girls  sticking  rows 
of  fallen  catalpa-blossoms  on  the  spikes  of 
iron  fences,  he  would  stop  and  praise  their 
powers  of  design.  He  became  susceptible  to 
tiny  boys  in  brown  sweaters  or  infinitesimal 
blue  overalls,  and  he  seldom  passed  without 
a  touch  of  sympathy  the  mild  creatures  that 
helped  deliver  the  laundry-bundles  or  the 
milk.  Especially  if  they  were  white:  he  was 
always  sorry,  he  said,  for  white  coats  in  a 
dirty  town. 

But  such  matters  of  advancing  age  are  for 
the  future. 

n 

As  regards  the  affairs  of  McComas,  I  nat 
urally  had  a  lesser  knowledge.  They  were 
more  numerous  and  more  complicated;  nor 
was  I  close  to  them.  I  can  only  say  that  they 
went  on  prosperously,  and  continued  to  go 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

on  prosperously:  their  success  justified  his 
concentration  on  them. 

As  regards  his  home  and  his  domestic  af 
fairs,  I  can  have  more  to  say.  My  wife  and  I 
called  once  or  twice  at  their  new  house;  with 
a  daughter  of  twenty-odd,  there  was  no  rea 
son  why  we  should  not  cultivate  that  particu 
lar  suburb,  and  every  reason  why  we  should. 

Johnny's  two  sons  were  at  home,  briefly,  as 
seniors  who  were  soon  to  graduate.  They 
were  tall,  hearty  lads,  with  some  of  their 
father's  high  coloring.  One  of  them  was  to 
be  injured  on  the  ball-field  in  his  last  term, 
and  to  die  at  home  a  month  later.  The  other, 
recovering  some  of  the  individuality  which 
a  twin  sometimes  finds  it  none  too  easy  to 
assert,  was  to  marry  before  he  had  been  out 
of  college  six  weeks  —  marry  young,  like  his 
father  before  him.  The  girl,  young  Althea, 
rather  resembling  her  mother,  —  her  own 
mother,  —  was  beginning  to  think  less  of 
large  hair-bows  and  more  of  longer  dresses. 
Her  father  was  quite  wrapped  up  in  her  and 
her  stepmother  seemed  to  take  to  her  kindly. 

Johnny,  in  conducting  us  over  his  house, 
f  212  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

laid  great  stress  on  her  room.  On  her  suite, 
rather;  or  even  on  her  wing.  She  had  her  own 
study,  her  own  bath,  her  own  sleeping  porch 
and  sun-parlor.  Everything  had  been  very 
delicately  and  richly  done.  And  she  had  her 
own  runabout  in  the  garage. 

"The  boys  will  go,  of  course,"  Johnny  said 
to  us,  with  his  arm  about  his  daughter;  "but 
our  little  Althea  will  be  a  good  girl  and  not 
leave  her  poor  old  father." 

Ah,  yes,  girls  sometimes  have  a  way  of 
lingering  at  home.  Our  own  Elsie  has  al 
ways  remained  faithful  to  her  parents. 

Johnny  had  chosen  to  call  himself  "old" 
and  "poor."  Of  course  he  looked  neither. 
True,  his  chestnut  hair  was  beginning  to 
gray;  but  it  made,  unless  clipped  closer  than 
he  always  wore  it,  at  least  an  intimation  of 
a  florid  aureole  of  crisp  vigor;  and  his  whole 
person  gave  an  exudation  of  power  and  pros 
perity.  No  sorrow  had  come  to  him  beyond 
the  death  of  his  parents  —  an  inevitable  loss 
which  he  had  duly  recorded  in  public.  That 
record  had  yet  to  receive  another  name  — 
and  yet  another. 

[    213    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

His  wife,  who  had  seemed  to  begin  by  brac 
ing  herself  to  stand  against  him,  now  seemed 
to  have  braced  herself  to  stand  with  him  — 
perhaps  a  more  commendable  wifely  attitude. 
I  mean  that  the  discipline  incident  to  a  life 
of  success  which  was  not  without  its  rigors 
had  become  to  her  almost  a  second  nature. 
The  order  of  the  day  was  cooperation,  team 
work;  in  the  grand  advance  she  was  no  strag 
gler,  no  malingerer.  It  was  a  matter  of  pride 
to  keep  step  with  him;  she  was  now  beyond 
the  fear  which  possibly  for  the  first  few  years 
had  troubled  her  —  the  fear  that  he,  by 
word,  or  look,  or  even  by  silence,  might  hint 
to  her  that  she  was  not  fully  "keeping  up." 
Johnny  himself  was  now  rather  heavy;  for 
the  regimen  which  they  were  pursuing  he 
had  the  strength  that  insured  against  any 
loss  of  flesh  through  tax  on  the  nerves.  His 
wife,  for  her  part,  looked  rather  lean  — 
trained,  even  trained  down.  As  the  wife  of 
Raymond,  she  would  probably  have  lapsed 
by  now  into  pinguitude  and  sloth  —  unless 
discontent  and  exasperation  had  prevented. 

After  showing  us  the  private  grandeurs  of 
[  214  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

their  own  estate,  they  motored  us  to  the 
coordinated  splendors  of  their  club.  It  had 
been  a  good  club  —  one  of  the  best  of  its 
kind  —  from  the  start,  and  now  it  had  grown 
bigger  and  better.  Its  arcaded  porches  and 
its  verandas  were,  wide;  its  links  showed  the 
hand  of  the  expert,  yet  also  the  sensitive 
touch  of  the  landscape  gardener;  an  orchestra 
of  greater  size  and  merit  than  is  common  in 
such  heedless  gatherings  played  for  itself  if 
not  for  the  gossiping,  stirring  throng;  and 
people  talked  golf-jargon  (for  which  I  don't 
care)  and  polo  (of  which  I  know  even  less). 
Though  the  day  was  one  in  the  relatively 
early  spring,  things  were  "going";  temporary 
backsets  would  doubtless  ensue  —  mean 
while  get  the  good  out  of  a  clear,  fair  after 
noon,  if  but  a  single  one. 

Through  all  this  gay  stir  the  McComaseg 
contrived  to  make  themselves  duly  felt. 
Johnny  himself  was  one  of  the  governors,  I 
gathered;  as  such  he  took  part  in  a  small, 
hurried  confab  in  the  smoking-room.  Whe 
ther  or  not  there  was  a  point  in  dispute,  I 
do  not  know;  but  when  he  rose  and  led  me 
[  215  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

forth  with  his  curved  palm  under  my  elbow 
the  matter  had  been  settled  his  way,  and  no 
ill-feeling  left:  rather,  as  I  sensed  it,  a  feeling 
of  relief  that  some  one  had  promptly  and 
energetically  laid  a  moot  question  for  once 
and  all. 

His  two  tall  boys  I  saw  walking,  with  an 
amiable  air  of  an  habituated  understanding, 
around  a  billiard-table:  "Can  you  beat 
them?"  asked  Johnny  proudly,  as  we  passed 
the  open  window.  His  daughter  circulated 
confidently,  as  being  almost  a  member  in 
full  and  regular  standing  herself.  She  seemed 
to  know  intimately  any  number  of  girls  of 
her  own  age,  and  even  a  few  lads  of  seventeen 
or  so  —  an  advantage  which  our  Elsie,  at 
that  stage,  never  quite  enjoyed,  and  which, 
due  allowance  made  for  altered  conditions, 
she  was  somewhat  slow  in  gaining,  later. 

And  about  his  wife?  Well,  the  slate  ap 
peared  to  have  been  wiped  —  if  there  really 
had  been  any  definite  marks  upon  it.  As 
suredly  no  smears  were  left  to  show.  Those  of 
the  younger  generation  of  seven  or  eight  years 
before  had  used  the  time  and  arranged  their 
f  216  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

futures,  and  the  still  younger  were  pressing 
into  their  places  —  witness  Johnny's  own 
brood.  Gertrude  McComas  was  now  a  self- 
assured  though  careful  matron  —  careful, 
I  thought,  not  to  ask  too  much  of  general 
society;  careful  not  to  notice  whether  or 
no  she  received  too  little;  careful,  most  of 
all,  not  to  let  it  appear  that  she  was  careful. 
Perhaps  it  was  this  care  which  made  up  a 
part  of  her  general  strain  —  and  enabled  her 
to  keep  the  lithe  slenderness  of  her  early 
figure. 

We  came  back  to  town  —  the  three  of  us  — 
by  train.  Both  of  my  Elsies  were  thought 
ful.  Certainly  we  were  playing  a  less  brilliant 
part  than  the  family  we  had  just  left. 

ra 

Meanwhile  Albert  pursued  his  studies. 
Though  he  had  not  so  far  to  come  for  a 
short  vacation  as  the  McComas  young  men, 
he  spent  the  short  vacations  at  the  school.  He 
was  at  an  awkward  age,  and  Raymond,  who 
could  see  him  with  eyes  not  unduly  clouded 
by  affection,  felt  him  to  be  an  unpromising  cub. 
[  217  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

He  was  no  adornment  for  any  house,  and  no 
satisfying  companion  for  his  father.  So  he 
passed  the  Easter  week  among  his  teachers. 

McComas  too  saw  little  of  Albert.  Those 
months  with  his  mother  were  usually  worked 
off  at  some  distant  resort,  which  his  step 
father  was  often  too  busy  to  reach.  Only 
once  did  he  spend  any  of  the  allotted  time 
in  McComas's  house.  This  was  a  fortnight 
in  that  grandiose  yet  tawdry  fabric  which 
had  been  sacrificed  to  business,  and  the  occa 
sion  was  an  illness  in  the  family  (not  Albert's) 
which  delayed  the  summer's  outing.  Mc 
Comas  had  accepted  Albert  with  a  large  toler 
ance  —  at  least  he  was  not  annoyed.  In  fact, 
the  boy's  mother,  however  she  may  have 
harassed  Raymond,  never  (to  do  her  justice) 
pushed  Albert  on  her  second  husband.  So, 
when  the  juncture  arrived,  — 

"Why,  yes,"  Johnny  had  said,  "have  him 
here,  of  course;  and  let  him  stay  as  long  as 
you  like.  He  does  n't  bother  me" 

Well,  Albert  went  ahead,  doing  his  Latin, 
and  groping  farther  into  the  dusky  penum 
bra  of  mathematics.  "Why?"  he  asked;  and 
[  218  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

they  explained  that  it  was  the  necessary  prep 
aration  for  the  university.  Albert  pondered. 
He  began  to  fear  that  he  must  continue  learn 
ing  things  he  did  n't  want  or  need,  so  that 
he  might  go  ahead  toward  learning  other 
things  he  didn't  want  or  need.  He  took  a 
plaintive,  discouraged  tone  in  a  letter  to 
his  mother;  and  she  —  making  an  exception 
to  her  rule  —  passed  along  the  protest  to 
McComas.  She  felt,  I  suppose,  that  he  would 
give  an  answering  note. 

Johnny  laughed.  He  himself  cared  nothing 
for  study;  and  he  was  so  happily  constituted, 
as  well  as  so  constantly  occupied,  that  he 
never  had  to  take  refuge  in  a  book. 

"Oh,  well,"  he  said,  broadly,  "he'll  live 
through  it  all,  and  live  it  down.  I  expect 
Tom  and  Joe  to.  The  final  gains  will  be  in 
quite  another  direction." 

Raymond  had  heard  the  same  plaint  from 
Albert,  and  was  less  pleased.  The  boy  was 
clearly  to  be  no  student,  still  less  a  lover  of 
the  arts.  Raymond  passed  over  all  thought 
of  old  Jehiel,  the  ruthlessly  acquisitive,  and 
placed  the  blame  on  the  other  grandfather, 
f  219  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

who  was  now  in  an  early  dotage  after  a  life 
long  harnessing  to  the  stock-ticker. 

"  I  don't  know  how  he's  coming  out!"  was 
Raymond's  impatient  remark,  over  one  of 
Albert's  letters.  "Who  knows  what  any  boy 
is  going  to  be?" 

Albert  accepted  his  school  readily  enough 
as  a  place  of  residence.  He  did  not  now  need, 
so  much  as  before,  his  mother's  small  cares 
—  in  fact,  was  glad  to  be  relieved  from  them; 
nor  was  he  quite  advanced  enough  to  profit 
from  a  cautious  father's  hints  and  sugges 
tions.  I  found  myself  hoping  that  Raymond, 
at  the  coming  stage  of  Albert's  develop 
ment,  might  have  as  little  trouble  as  I  had 
had  over  my  own  boy  (with  whose  early  ca 
reer  I  shall  not  burden  you).  Yet,  after  all, 
fathers  may  apprehensively  exchange  views 
and  cautiously  devise  methods  of  approach 
only  to  find  their  efforts  superfluous:  so  many 
boys  come  through  perfectly  well,  after  all. 
Simply  consider,  for  example,  those  in  our 
old  singing-class.  The  only  one  to  occasion 
any  inconvenience  was  Johnny  McComas, 
and  he  was  not  a  member  at  all. 
[  220  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

The  one  side  of  the  matter  that  began  to 
concern  Raymond  was  the  money  side.  Al 
bert  cost  at  school,  and  was  going  to  cost 
more  at  college.  His  father  began  to  econo 
mize.  For  instance,  he  cut  off,  this  spring, 
the  contribution  which  he  had  been  making 
for  years  in  support  of  an  organization  of 
reformers  that  had  been  working  for  civic 
betterment.  These  men,  considering  their 
small  number  and  their  limited  resources 
had  done  wonders  in  raising  the  tone  and 
quality  of  the  local  administration.  The 
city's  reputation,  outside,  had  become  re 
spectable.  But  a  sag  had  begun  to  show  it 
self  —  the  relapse  that  is  pretty  certain  to 
follow  on  an  extreme  and  perhaps  over 
strained  endeavor.  The  little  band  needed 
money.  Raymond  was  urged  to  reconsider 
and  to  continue  —  the  upgrade  would  soon 
be  $  reached  again.  Raymond  sent,  reluc 
tantly,  a  smaller  amount  and  asked  why 
the  net  for  contributions  was  not  cast  a 
little  wider.  He  even  suggested  a  few 
names. 

Whether  he  mentioned  the  name  of  John 
[  221  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

W.  McComas  I  do  not  know,  but  McComas 
was  given  an  opportunity  to  help. 

"See  what  they've  sent  me,"  he  said  to  me 
one  day  on  the  street. 

He  smiled  over  the  urgent,  fervid  phrases 
of  the  appeal.  The  world,  so  far  as  he  was 
concerned,  was  going  very  well.  It  did  n't 
need  improvement;  and  if  it  did,  he  had  n't 
the  time  to  improve  it. 

"They  appear  to  be  losing  their  grip,"  he 
added.  "They  did  n't  do  very  well  last  elec 
tion,  anyhow." 

I  sensed  his  reluctance  to  be  associated  with 
a  cause  that  seemed  to  be  a  losing  one. 

"Well,  I  don't  know,"  I  said.  "I'm  giving 
something  myself;  and  if  I  can  afford  to,  you 


can." 


But  he  developed  no  interest.  He  sent  a 
check  absurdly  disproportionate  to  his  capac 
ity  (he  was  embarrassed,  I  am  glad  to  say, 
when  he  mentioned  later  the  amount);  and 
I  incline  to  think  that  even  this  bit  was  done 
almost  out  of  a  personal  regard  for  me. 

Raymond  cut  a  part  of  his  own  contribu 
tion  out  of  Albert's  allowance,  and  there  was 
[  222  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

better  reason  than  ever  why  Albert  should 
not  take  a  long  trip  for  only  four  or  five  days 
at  home. 

IV 

It  is  tiresome,  I  know,  to  read  about  muni 
cipal  reform;  most  of  us  want  the  results  and 
not  the  process  —  and  some  of  us  not  even 
the  results.  And  it  is  no  less  tiresome  to  read 
about  investments,  unless  we  are  dealing 
with  some  young  knight  of  finance  who 
strives  successfully  for  his  lady's  favor  and 
who,  successful,  lives  with  her  ever  after  in 
the  style  to  which  her  father  has  accustomed 
her.  But  in  the  case  of  a  maladroit  man  of 
fifty  ... 

I  had  asked  Raymond  to  call  on  me  with 
any  new  scheme  that  was  taking  his  attention, 
and  one  forenoon  he  walked  in. 

He  had  an  envelope  of  loose  papers.  He 
laid  some  of  them  on  my  desk  and  thumbed 
a  few  others  with  an  undecided  expression. 

"What  do  you  think  of  this?"  he  asked. 
"I've  got  to  have  more  money,  and  here's 
something  that  may  bring  it  in." 
[    223    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

It  was  a  speculative  industrial  affair  in 
Upper  Michigan.  I  saw  some  familiar  names 
attached  —  among  them  that  of  John  W. 
McComas,  though  not  prominently. 

"I'll  find  out  for  you,"  I  said. 

"I  don't  want  you  to  find  out  from  him." 

"  I  '11  find  out." 

Raymond  fingered  his  envelope  fussily: 
there  was  nothing  left  in  it. 

"It's  all  costing  me  too  much.  Extras  at 
that  school.  That  big  house  —  too  big,  too 
expensive.  I  can't  lug  it  along  any  farther. 
Find  me  some  one  to  buy  it." 

"I'll  see,"  I  said. 

I  told  him  about  our  visit  to  the  club,  two 
or  three  months  before.  I  implied,  in  as  deli 
cate  and  circumambulatory  a  way  as  possible, 
that  his  one-time  wife,  according  to  my  own 
observations,  taken  under  peculiarly  favor 
able,  because  exacting,  conditions,  was  com 
pletely  accepted. 

"Oh  yes,"  he  replied,  as  if  the  matter  had 

been  settled  years  ago,  and  as  if  he  had  long 

had  that  sense  of  it.    Yes,  he  seemed  to  be 

saying,  the  marriage  had  made  it  all  right 

[    224    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

for  her,  and  had  soon  begun  to  make  it  better 
for  him.  Possibly  not  a  "deceived"  husband; 
and  no  longer  so  rawly  flagrant  a  failure  as  a 
human  companion. 

"Their  house  is  good,  I  gather,"  he  went 
on.  "There  were  some  plates  of  it  in  the 
architectural  journals.  Just  how  good  he 
does  n't  know,  I  suppose  —  and  never  will." 

"I  found  him  fairly  appreciative  of  it." 

"Possibly  —  as  a  financial  achievement 
brought  about  by  his  own  money." 

"He's  learning  some  of  its  good  points,"  I 
declared. 

"There  was  some  talk  of  having  Albert 
there,  just  before  they  went  off  to  the  Yellow 
stone."  He  frowned.  "Well,  this  can't  go 
on  so  many  more  years,  now." 

I  did  not  quite  get  Raymond's  attitude.  He 
did  not  want  the  boy  with  him  at  home.  He 
did  not  want  to  meet  any  extra  expenses  — 
and  Mrs.  McComas  was  assuredly  paying 
Albert's  way  through  mid-summer,  as  well 
as  eternally  buying  him  clothes.  I  think  that 
what  Raymond  wanted  —  and  wanted  but 
rather  weakly  —  was  his  own  will,  whether 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

there  was  any  advantage  in  it  or  not,  and 
wanted  that  will  without  payments,  charges, 
costs. 

I  disliked  his  grudging  way,  or  rather,  his 
balking  way,  as  regarded  a  recognition  of  the 
liberality  of  his  former  wife's  husband  —  for 
that  was  what  it  came  to. 

I  returned  his  prospectus.  "  I  '11  look  this  up. 
How  about  that  company  in  Montana?"  I 
continued. 

" They've  passed  a  dividend.  I  was  count 
ing  on  something  from  that  quarter." 

"And  how  about  the  factory  in  Iowa?" 

"That  will  bring  me  something  next  year." 

"  Well,"  I  said,  doubling  back  to  the  mat 
ter  that  had  brought  him  in,  "I'll  inquire 
about  this  and  let  you  know." 

In  the  course  of  a  few  days  I  called  on 
McComas.  Others  were  calling.  Others  were 
always  calling.  If  I  wanted  to  see  him  I  should 
have  to  wait.  I  had  expected  to  wait.  I 
waited. 

When  I  was  finally  admitted,  he  rose  and 
came  halfway  through  his  splendors  of  up 
holstery  to  give  me  an  Olympian  greeting. 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

"It's  brass  tacks,"  I  said.  "Three  min 
utes  will  do." 

"Four,  if  you  like." 

"Three.  Frankly,  very  frankly,  is  this  a 
thing"  —  here  I  used  the  large  page  of  or 
namental  letter-press  as  a  word-saver —  "is 
this  a  thing  for  an  ordinary  investor?" 

"Ordinary  investor"  —  that  is  what  I  called 
Raymond.  Perhaps  I  flattered  him  unduly. 

"Why, "responded  McComas,  with  a  grim 
ace,  "it's  a  right  enough  thing  for  the  right 
man  —  or  men.  Several  of  us  expect  to  do 
pretty  well  out  of  it." 

'Several'?    How  about    the  rank  out 
sider?" 

"Anybody  that  you  know  sniffing?" 

"Yes." 

"Who?" 

"Well  — Prince." 

"H'm."  Johnny  pondered;  became  mag 
nanimous.  "Well,  it  ain't  for  him.  Pull  his 
nose  away.  I  don't  want  his  money." 

He  knew  what  he  had  taken.  He  may  have 
had  a  prescience  of  what  he  was  yet  to  take. 
He  could  afford  an  interim  of  generosity. 
[    227    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 


A  year  or  so  went  on,  and  we  met  the  Mc- 
Comases  at  a  horse-show.  Once  more  it  had 
become  distinguished  to  have  horses,  and  to 
exhibit  them  —  in  the  right  place.  Althea  was 
with  her  parents;  so  was  the  survivor  of  the 
stalwart  twins. 

Johnny  had  taken  the  blow  hard.  That  a 
son  of  his,  one  so  strong  and  robust,  a  youth 
on  whom  so  much  time  and  thought  and  care 
and  money  had  been  lavished  to  fit  him  for 
the  world,  should  go  down  and  go  out  (and 
in  such  a  sudden,  trivial  fashion)  —  oh,  it  was 
more  than  he  felt  he  could  endure.  But  he 
was  built  on  a  broad  plan;  his  nature,  when  the 
test  came,  opened  a  wide  door  to  the  assimi 
lation  of  experiences  and  offered  a  wide  mar 
gin  for  adjustment  to  their  jars.  His  other 
son,  the  full  equal  of  the  lost  one,  still  sur 
vived  and  was  present  to-day;  and  Johnny, 
grandly  reconciled,  was  himself  again. 

Althea  had  taken  the  interval  to  make  sure 
about  her  hair-ribbon  and  her  skirts.  The 
ribbons  had  been  pronounced  outgrown  and 
[  228  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

superfluous,  and  had  been  banished.  The 
suitability  of  longer  skirts  had  been  felt,  and 
had  been  acted  upon.  Althea  was  now  almost 
a  young  lady,  and  a  very  pretty  one. 

I  say  it  without  bitterness.  The  beauties 
of  nature  —  those  trifles  that  make  the  great 
differences  —  are  indeed  unequally  distrib 
uted  among  human  creatures.  Not  all  girls 
are  pretty;  not  all  attractive;  not  all  equipped 
to  make  their  way.  No. 

You  will  assume  for  yourselves  the  green 
ery  of  grass  and  trees,  the  slow  cumuli  in  the 
afternoon  sky,  the  lively,  brightly  dressed 
throngs  on  lawns  and  verandas,  and  the 
horses;  yes,  even  those  were  present,  some 
where  or  other. 

Gertrude  McComas  was  of  the  crowd; 
suitably  dressed  (or,  perhaps,  attired),  a 
little  less  spare  than  once,  and  somehow  con 
veying  the  impression,  if  unobtrusively,  that 
her  presence  was  necessary  for  the  complete 
ness  of  the  function.  She  was  pleasant  with 
Althea,  who  had  a  horse  on  her  mind  and  a 
number  on  her  back. 

Gertrude  had  returned  from  the  North 
[  229  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

with  Althea  and  Albert,  a  week  before  Al 
bert's  allotted  time  with  her  was  up,  so  that 
they  might  all  be  a  part  of  this  occasion. 
Albert  was  now  taller  than  his  father,  had 
begun  to  gather  up  a  little  assertiveness  on 
reaching  the  end  of  his  preparatory  days, 
had  taken  his  examinations,  and  was  un 
derstood  to  be  within  a  month  or  so  of 
college. 

I  cannot  say  that  Althea's  skirts,  however 
much  thought  she  had  given  them,  were  long 
to-day.  The  only  skirts  she  wore  were  the 
skirts  of  her  riding-coat.  The  rest  of  her 
was  boots  and  trousers;  and  she  carried  a 
little  quirt  with  which  she  flecked  the  dust 
from  her  nethers,  now  and  again,  rather 
smartly. 

Albert  looked  —  obviously  envious,  and 
obviously  perturbed.  His  various  knockings 
from  pillar  to  post  had  left  him  without  horse 
and  without  horsemanship.  And  here  was  a 
young  feminine  (almost  a  relative,  in  a  sense; 
well,  was  she,  or  was  she  not?)  who  was 
dressed  as  he  (with  some  slight  differences) 
might  have  been  dressed,  and  who  was  doing 
[  230  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

(or  was  about  to  do)  some  of  the  things  that 
he  himself  (as  he  was  now  keenly  conscious) 
had  always  hankered  to  do  ...  How  was 
he  to  take  it  all?  —  the  difference,  the  like 
ness,  the  closeness,  the  distance  .  .  . 

And  we  —  my  wife  and  I  —  became  sud 
denly,  poignantly,  even  bitterly  aware  that 
our  Elsie,  beside  us  in  her  tailor-made,  had 
never  been  on  a  horse  in  her  life  —  and  was 
now  perhaps  too  old  to  make  a  good  begin 
ning. 

After  a  little  while  AJthea  was  carried 
away  for  her  "entry"  or  "event,"  or  what 
ever  they  properly  call  it  —  for  I  am  no 
sportsman.  Some  small  section  of  the  crowd 
interested  itself  about  the  same  time  —  at 
least  got  between  us  and  the  proceedings. 
We  saw  little  or  nothing  —  just  heads,  hats 
and  parasols.  All  I  know  is  that,  in  a  few 
moments,  Althea  reappeared  —  I  think  she 
had  leaped  something.  Her  father  was  by 
her  side,  vastly  proud  and  happy.  Her 
mother  (as  I  shall  say  for  short)  arrived 
from  somewhere,  with  a  gratified  smile.  Her 
big  brother  presently  drew  up  alongside  on 
[  231  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

a  polo-pony,  and  gave  her  a  big,  flat-handed 
pat  in  the  middle  of  her  placard,  and  a  hand 
some  young  woman,  who  was  pointed  out 
to  us  as  the  wife  he  had  married  in  February, 
during  our  fortnight  at  Miami,  reached  up 
to  her  bridle-hand  and  gave  it  a  squeeze.  And 
there  was  a  deep  fringe  of  miscellaneous 
friends,  acquaintances  and  rivals. 

"What  do  you  think  of  our  daughter, 
now!"  asked  Johnny,  loudly  and  generally, 
as  he  lifted  Althea  down.  He  looked  about 
as  if  to  sweep  together  the  widest  assemblage 
of  praises  and  applause.  Many  flocked; 
many  congratulated;  but  still  further  tribute 
must  be  levied.  McComas  caught  sight  of 
Albert.  The  young  fellow  stood  on  the  edge 
of  the  thing,  staring,  embarrassed,  shaken 
to  his  centre. 

"Here,  you,  Albert!"  Johnny  cried;  "come 
over  and  shake  hands  with  the  winner!" 

And  meanwhile,  Raymond,  off  by  himself 
somewhere  or  other,  I  suppose,  may  have 
been  studying  how  in  the  world  he  was  ever 
going  to  put  Albert  through  Yale. 

[    232    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

VI 

Business  once  more! 

It  ought  to  be  barred.  I  get  enough  of  it 
in  my  daily  routine  without  having  it  in 
trude  here.  Business  should  do  no  more  than 
provide  the  platform  and  the  scenic  back 
ground  for  the  display  of  young  love,  hope 
and  beauty.  But  here  we  have  to  deal  with 
the  affairs  of  a  worried  and  incompetent  man 
half  way  through  his  fifties. 

Raymond  came  in  one  morning,  on  my  sum 
mons.  His  manner  was  depressed ;  it  was  becom 
ing  habitually  so.  I  tried  to  cheer  him  with 
indifferent  topics, — among  them  the  horse- 
show,  which  I  saw  so  unsatisfactorily  and 
which  I  have  described  so  inadequately.  He 
had  already  heard  about  it  from  Albert,  and 
he  felt  no  relish  for  the  friendliness  Johnny 
McComas  had  displayed  on  that  occasion. 

"  Try  ing  to  get  him,  too?"  was  Raymond's 
comment. 

"Oh,  I  would  n't  quite  say  that  .  .  ." 

"I  have  a  letter  from  his  mother.    She 
wants  to  know  about  college." 
[    233    1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

"Well,  how  are  things?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  know;  poor." 

"That  Iowa  company?" 

"Next  year." 

"Again?" 

"Yes  —  next  year;  as  usual." 

"Well,  I  have  news  for  you." 

"Good?"  he  asked,  picking  up  a  little. 

"That  depends  on  how  you  look  at  it.  I 
have  a  buyer  for  your  house." 

"Thank  God!" 

"Don't  hurry  to  thank  God.  Perhaps  you 
will  want  to  thank  the  Devil." 

Raymond's  face  fell.  "You  don't  mean 
that  he  —  on  top  of  everything  else  —  has 
come  forward  to  —  ?" 

"My  friend!  my  friend!  It  isn't  that  at 
all.  'He'  has  nothing  to  do  with  it.  Quite 
another  party." 

And  it  was.  A  Mr.  Gluckstein,  a  sort  of 
impresario  made  suddenly  rich  by  a  few 
seasons  with  fiddlers  and  prima  donnas,  was 
the  man.  He  was  willing,  he  said,  —  and  I 
paid  the  news  out  as  evenly  and  considerately 
as  I  could,  —  he  was  willing  to  take  the  house 
[  234  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

and  assume  the  mortgage  —  but  he  asked  a 
bonus  of  five  thousand  dollars  for  doing  it. 

"The  scoundrel!"  groaned  Raymond,  his 
face  twisted  by  contemptuous  rage.  "The 
impudent  scoundrel ! " 

"Possibly  so.  But  that  is  his  offer  —  and 
the  only  one.  And  it  is  his  best." 

Raymond  sat  with  his  eyes  on  the  floor. 
He  was  afraid  to  let  me  see  his  face.  He 
hated  the  house  —  it  was  an  incubus,  a  mill 
stone;  but  — 

He  visibly  despaired.  "What  shall  I  do 
about  Albert's  college,  now?"  he  muttered 
presently. 

He  seemed  to  have  passed  at  a  bound  be 
yond  the  stage  of  sale  and  transfer.  The 
odious  property  was  off  his  hands  —  and 
every  hope  of  a  spare  dollar  had  gone  with  it. 

"His  mother  writes  — "  began  Raymond. 

"Yes?" 

"She  tells  me  — Well,  her  father  died 
last  month,  it  seems,  and  she  is  expecting 
something  out  of  his  estate.  ..." 

"Estate?  Is  there  one?" 

"Who  can  say?  A  man  in  that  business! 
[  235  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

There  might  be  something;  there  might  be 
nothing  or  less.  And  it  might  take  a  year 
or  more  to  get  it." 

"And  if  there  is  anything?" 

"She  says  she  will  look  after  Albert's  first 
year  or  two.  I  was  about  to  refuse,  but  I 
expect  I  shall  have  to  listen  now." 

He  was  silent.  Then  he  broke  out:  — 

"But  there  won't  be.  That  old  woman 
with  her  water-waves  and  her  wrinkles  is 
still  hanging  on;  even  if  there  should  be 
anything,  she  would  be  the  one  to  get 
most  of  it.  I  know  her  —  she  would  snatch 
it  all!" 

"Listen,  Raymond,'*  I  said;  "y°u  nad 
better  let  me  help  you  here." 

"I  don't  want  you  to.  There  must  be  some 
way  to  manage." 

He  fell  into  thought. 

"I  doubt  if  she  can  do  anything,  herself. 
Whatever  she  did  would  come  through  him 
in  the  end.  You  say  he  likes  Albert?"  He 
was  silent  again.  "I  don't  want  to  meet 
either  of  them  —  but  I  would  about  as  soon 
meet  him  as  her." 

[    236    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

I  saw  that  he  was  nerving  himself  for 
another  scene  a  faire.  Well,  it  would  be  less 
trying  than  the  first  one.  If  his  sense  of  form, 
his  flair  for  fatalism,  still  persisted,  ease  was 
out  of  the  question  and  no  surrogate  could 
serve. 

Perhaps,  after  all,  there  had  been  nothing 
between  those  two.  Anyway,  in  the  general 
eye  the  marriage  had  made  everything  right. 
She  was  accepted,  certainly.  And  as  cer 
tainly  he  had  lived  down,  if  he  had  ever 
possessed  it,  the  reputation  of  a  hapless  hus 
band. 

He  wrote  to  her  in  a  non-committal  way 
—  a  letter  which  left  loopholes,  room  for 
accommodation.  Her  reply  suggested  that  he 
call  at  the  bank;  she  would  pass  on  the  word. 
He  told  me  he  would  try  to  do  so.  I  saw  the 
impudent  concert-monger  was  to  have  his 
house. 

And  so,  one  forenoon,  at  eleven  or  so,  Ray 
mond,  after  some  self-drivings,  reached  the 
bank;  by  appointment,  as  he  understood. 
Through  the  big  doors;  up  the  wide,  balus- 
traded  stairway  —  it  was  the  first  time  he 
[  237  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

had  ever  been  in  the  place.  He  was  well  on 
the  way  to  the  broad,  square  landing,  when 
some  lively  clerks  or  messengers,  who  had 
been  springing  along  behind  him,  all  at  once 
slackened  their  pace  and  began  to  skirt  the 
paneled  marble  walls.  A  number  of  pros 
perous  middle-aged  and  elderly  men  were 
coming  down  together  in  a  compact  group. 
It  seemed  as  if  some  directors'  meeting  was 
in  progress  —  in  progress  from  one  office, 
or  one  building,  to  another.  In  the  middle 
of  the  group  was  John  W.  McComas. 

He  was  absorbed,  abstracted.  Raymond, 
like  some  of  the  other  up-farers,  had  gained 
the  landing,  and  like  them  now  stood  a  little 
to  one  side.  McComas  looked  out  at  him 
with  no  particular  expression  and  indeed 
with  no  markedness  of  attention. 

"How  do  you  do?"  he  said  indifferently. 

"I'm  pretty  well,"  said  Raymond  dis 
piritedly. 

"And  that  was  all! "he  reported  next  day 
in  a  high  state  of  indignation.  "Don't  sup 
pose  I  shall  try  it  again!" 

But  a  careless  Gertrude  had  failed  to  in- 
[  238  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

form  her  husband  of  the  appointment.  She 
had  been  busy,  or  he  had  been  away  from 
home  .  .  . 

"Go  once  more,"  I  counseled,  I  pleaded. 

A  note  came  to  him  from  McComas  —  a 
decent,  a  civil.  Come  and  talk  things  over  — • 
that  was  its  purport.  He  went. 

McComas,  as  you  can  guess,  was  very 
bland,  very  expansive,  very  magnanimous 
(to  his  own  sense).  "I  like  Albert!"  he  de 
clared  heartily.  But  he  did  little  to  cloak  the 
fact  that  it  was  his  own  money  which  was  to 
carry  the  boy  through  college. 

Raymond  was  in  the  depths  for  a  month. 
After  Gluckstein  had  got  his  deed  for  the 
house  and  Albert  had  packed  his  trunk  for 
the  East,  he  felt  that  now  indeed  he  had  lost 
wife,  home  and  son. 


PART  VIII 
I 

BEFORE  leaving  his  house  for  good  and  all, 
Raymond  spent  a  dismal  fortnight  in  going 
over  old  papers  —  out-of-date  documents 
which  once  had  interested  his  father  and 
grandfather,  books,  diaries  and  memoranda 
which  had  occupied  his  own  youthful  days: 
the  slowly  deposited,  encumbering  sediment 
of  three  generations,  long  in  one  place.  There 
were  several  faded  agreements  with  the  sig 
nature  of  the  ineffable  individual  who  had 
married  into  the  family,  had  received  a  quit 
claim  to  those  suburban  acres,  and  had  then, 
at  a  point  of  stress,  refused  to  give  them  back. 
There  were  sheaves  of  old  receipted  bills  — 
among  them  one  for  the  set  of  parlor  furni 
ture  in  the  best  (or  the  worst)  style  of  the 
Second  Empire.  There  were  drafts  of  Ray 
mond's  early  compositions  —  his  first  at 
tempts  at  the  essay  and  the  short  story; 
there  was  an  ancient,  heavily  annotated 
[  240  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

Virgil  (only  six  books),  and  there  was  a 
sheepskin  algebra  in  which  he  had  taken,  by 
himself,  a  post-school  course  as  a  means 
of  intellectual  tonic,  with  extra  problems 
dexterously  worked  out  and  inserted  on  bits 
of  blue  paper  .  .  . 

"I  filled  the  furnace  seven  times,"  he  said 
to  me,  laconically. 

I  myself  felt  the  strain  of  it  all.  It  is  less 
wearing  to  move  every  two  or  three  years, 
as  most  of  us  do,  than  to  move  but  once  — 
near  the  end  of  a  long  life,  of  a  succession  of 
lives. 

I  never  asked  what  Mr.  Gluckstein  thought 
of  the  orchestrion. 

Raymond  went  to  live  at  a  sort  of  private 
hotel.  Here  he  read  and  wrote.  He  carried 
with  him  a  set  of  little  red  guide-books,  long, 
long  since  out  of  date,  and  he  restudied  Eu 
rope  in  the  light  of  early  memories.  He  also 
subscribed  to  a  branch  of  a  public  library  in 
the  vicinity  —  a  vicinity  that  seemed  on  the 
far  edge  of  things.  However,  the  tendency 
of  the  town  has  always  been  centrifugal. 
Many  of  our  worthies,  if  they  have  held  on  to 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

life  long  enough,  have  had  to  make  the  same 
disconcerting  trek. 

From  this  retreat  Raymond  occasionally 
issued  to  concerts  and  picture-exhibitions. 
I  do  not  know  that  he  was  greatly  concerned 
for  them;  but  they  carried  on  a  familiar  tra 
dition  and  gave  employment  still  to  a  failing 
momentum. 

From  this  same  retreat  there  would  issue, 
about  the  Christmas  season,  a  few  water- 
colors  on  Italian  subjects.  If  they  were  faint 
and  feeble,  I  shall  not  say  so.  We  ourselves 
have  one  of  them  —  an  indecisive  view  of  the 
ruins  in  the  Roman  Forum.  It  is  not  quite 
the  Forum  I  recall;  but  then,  as  we  know,  the 
Roman  Forum,  for  the  past  half -century,  has 
altered  almost  from  year  to  year. 

Letters  reached  him  occasionally  from 
Albert  the  freshman.  They  might  well  have 
come  from  Albert  the  sophomore.  Raymond 
showed  me  one  of  them  on  an  evening  when 
I  had  called  to  see  him  in  his  new  quar 
ters. 

He  was  comfortable  enough  and  snug.  On 
the  walls  and  shelves  were  books  and  pic- 
[  242  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

tures  that  I  remembered  seeing  in  his  boy 
hood  bedroom. 

"I  like  it  here,"  he  said  emphatically.  And 
in  truth  it  was  the  den  of  a  born  bachelor  — 
one  who  had  discovered  himself  too  late. 

Well,  Raymond  passed  me  Albert's  letter. 
He  showed  it  to  me,  not  with  pride,  but  (as 
was  evident  from  the  questioning  eye  he 
kept  on  my  face)  with  a  view  to  learning  what 
I  thought  of  it.  He  was  asking  a  verdict,  yet 
shrinking  from  it. 

Albert  was  rather  cocky;  also,  rather  rest 
less  —  I  wondered  if  he  would  last  to  be  a 
sophomore.  And  he  displayed  little  of  the  con 
sideration  due  a  father.  Clearly,  Raymond,  as 
a  parent,  had  been  weighed  and  found  wanting. 
Albert's  ideal  stood  high  in  another  quarter, 
and  his  life's  ambition  might  soon  drive  him 
in  a  direction  the  reverse  of  academic. 

"How  does  it  strike  you?  "  asked  Raymond, 
as  I  sat  mulling  over  Albert's  sheets. 

I  searched  my  mind  for  some  non-com 
mittal  response. 

"Well,"  Raymond  burst  out,  "he  need  n't 
respect  me  if  he  does  n't  admire  him!"       , 
[    243    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

n 

Albert's  response  to  McComas  at  the  horse- 
show  had  not  been  noticeably  prompt  or 
adroit,  but  he  cast  about  manfully  for  words 
and  presently  was  able  to  voice  his  apprecia 
tion  of  Althea's  feat  (as  it  was  regarded)  and 
to  congratulate  her  upon  it.  Johnny  Mc 
Comas  was  not  at  all  displeased.  Albert  had 
not  been  light-handed  and  graceful,  but  he 
developed  (under  this  sudden  stress)  a  sturdy, 
downright  mode  of  speech  which  showed  sin 
cerity  if  not  dexterity.  The  square-standing, 
straight-speaking  farm-lad  —  straight-speak 
ing,  if  none  too  ready  —  was  sounding  an 
atavistic  note  caught  from  his  great-grand 
father  back  in  York  State. 

"Stuff  in  him!"  commented  Johnny.  "It's 
a  wonder,  but  there  is.  Must  be  his  mother." 

Albert  made  no  particular  impression,  how 
ever,  on  Althea  herself.  A  dozen  other  young 
fellows  had  been  more  demonstrative  and 
more  fluent.  He  simply  slid  over  the  surface 
of  her  mind  and  fell  away  again.  She  had 
known  him  —  intermittently  —  for  years  as 
[  244  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

a  somewhat  inexpressive  boy;  now,  as  a  po 
tential  gallant,  he  was  negligible,  as  compared 
with  others.  But  Albert,  speaking  in  a  sense 
either  specific  or  general,  did  not  mean  to  re 
main  negligible. 

He  soon  forgot  most  of  the  details  of  the  day 
at  the  horse-show.  He  had  hardly  a  greater 
affinity  for  sport  than  his  father  had  had.  He 
began  his  sophomore  year  with  no  interest  in 
athletics.  The  compulsory  gymnasium-work 
bored  him.  He  made  no  single  team  —  put 
forth  not  the  least  effort  to  make  one.  The 
football  crowd,  the  baseball  crowd,  even  the 
tennis  crowd,  gave  him  up  and  left  him  alone. 

Yet  his  bodily  energies  and  his  mental  am 
bitions  were  waxing  daily;  his  passions  too. 
There  must  be  an  outlet  for  all  this  vigor  — • 
business,  or  matrimony,  or  war.  In  one  short 
twelvemonth  he  compassed  all  three. 

By  the  end  of  Albert's  second  year,  the  day 
had  come  when  a  self-respecting  young  man  of 
fortune  and  position  found  it  hard  if  he  must 
confess:  "I  have  taken  all  yet  given  nothing." 
The  Great  War  waged  more  furiously  than 
ever,  and  came  more  close.  The  country  had 
[  245  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

first  said,  "You  may,"  and,  later,  "You  must." 
Albert  did  not  wait  for  the  "must."  He  closed 
his  year  a  month  or  so  in  advance  —  as  he 
had  done  once  before  —  and  enrolled  in  a 
college-unit  for  service  abroad. 

Raymond  gave  his  consent  —  a  matter  of 
form,  a  futility.  In  fact,  Albert  enrolled  first 
and  asked  (or  advised)  later.  His  mother,  of 
a  mixed  mind,  would  have  interposed  an  ob 
jection.  McComas  hushed  her  down.  "Let 
him  go.  He  has  the  makings  of  a  man.  Don't 
cut  off  his  best  chance." 

McComas  had  a  right  to  speak.  Tom  Mc 
Comas  was  going  too,  and  going  with  his 
father's  warm  approval.  If  he  could  leave  a 
young  wife  and  a  three-year-old  boy,  need 
a  young  bachelor  student  be  held  back? 

Albert  came  West  for  a  good-bye.  His 
father  held  his  hand  and  gave  him  a  long 
scrutiny  —  part  of  the  time  with  eyes  wide 
open,  part  of  the  time  with  eyes  closed  to  a 
fine,  inquiring,  studious  line.  But  he  never 
saw  what  there  was  to  see.  In  his  own  body 
there  was  not  one  drop  of  martial  blood;  in  his 
being  not  an  iota  of  the  bellicose  spirit.  Why 
[  246  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

men  fight,  even  why  boys  fight  —  all  this 
had  been  a  mystery  which  he  must  take  on 
faith,  with  little  help  from  the  fisticuffs  and 
brawls  of  school-days,  or  even  from  the  gi 
gantic,  agonizing  closing-in  of  whole  peoples, 
now  under  way. 

Yet  Albert  understood,  and  meant  to  take 
his  share. 

Who,  indeed,  as  Raymond  had  once  asked 
petulantly,  could  know  what  a  boy  was  going 
to  be? 

When  Althea  saw  Albert  in  khaki,  she  saw 
him:  this  time  no  indifference,  no  fusing  him 
with  the  crowd,  no  letting  him  fade  away  un 
noticed.  If  he  had  shaken  before  her  on  her 
hurdle-taker,  she  now  shook  before  him  in  his 
brown  regimentals.  It  was  as  if,  in  an  instant, 
he  had  bolted  from  their  familiar  —  their 
sometimes  over-familiar  —  atmosphere.  He 
confused,  he  perturbed  her:  he  was  so  like,  yet 
so  different;  so  close,  yet  so  remote.  Was  he 
a  relative,  of  sorts  —  a  relative  in  some  loose 
sense;  or  was  he  a  strange  young  hero,  with 
his  face  set  toward  yet  stranger  scenes?  .  .  . 

"Come,"  said  her  father,  who  was  close 
[  247  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

by,  between  the  horse-block  and  the  syringa- 
bushes,  "Albert  is  n't  the  only  soldier  on  the 
battle-field.  Look  at  Tom,  here!" 

Althea  turned  her  eyes  dutifully  toward  her 
stalwart  brother,  who  humorously  put  up 
his  stiffened  fingers  to  the  stiff  brim  of  his 
hat;  and  then  she  looked  back  at  Albert. 

ra 

McComas's  bank,  like  others,  put  its  office- 
machinery  at  the  disposal  of  the  Government, 
when  the  first  war-loan  was  in  the  making. 
It  seemed  a  small  matter,  at  the  beginning, 
but  administrative  organization  was  taxed 
and  clerical  labors  piled  up  hugely  as  the  big, 
slow  event  moved  along  through  its  various 
stages.  This  work  in  itself  came  almost  to  seem 
an  adequate  contribution  to  the  cause;  surely 
in  the  mere  percentage  of  interest  offered  there 
was  little  to  appeal  to  the  financial  pub 
lic,  except  perhaps  the  depositors  of  savings 
banks.  McComas  himself  felt  no  promptings 
to  subscribe  to  this  loan;  but  his  directors 
thought  that  a  reasonable  degree  of  partici 
pation  was  "indicated."  The  bank's  name 
[  248  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

went  down,  with  the  names  of  some  others; 
and  the  clerks  who  had  been  working  over 
hours  on  the  new  and  exacting  minutiae  of 
the  undertaking  were  given  a  chance  to  divert 
their  savings  toward  the  novel  securities.  The 
bank  displayed  the  Nation's  flag,  and  the  flags 
of  some  of  the  allies.  It  all  made  a  busy  corner. 
McComas  thought  of  his  son  in  khaki,  and 
felt  himself  warming  daily  as  a  patriot. 

"  We  can  do  them  up,"  he  declared.  The  war, 
with  him,  was  still  largely  a  matter  of  finan 
cial  pressure.  The  pressure,  even  if  exerted  at 
long  range,  was  bound  to  tell.  Many  of  "our 
boys"  would  never  get  "over  there"  at  all. 
They  were  learning  how  to  safeguard  our 
country's  future  within  our  country  itself. 

His  wife,  who  had  been  flitting  from  ve 
randa  to  veranda  in  their  pleasant  suburban 
environment,  and  been  doing,  with  other 
ladies  of  her  circle,  some  desultory  work  for 
the  wounded  soldiers  of  the  future,  now  came 
down  to  the  centre  of  the  town  and  took  up 
the  work  in  good  earnest.  She  saw  Tom  Mc 
Comas  as  a  seasoned  adult  who  could  look 
after  himself,  but  her  own  Albert  was  still  a 
[  249  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

boy.  It  was  easy  to  see  him  freezing,  soaking, 
falling,  lying  in  distress.  She  busied  herself 
behind  a  great  plate-glass  window  on  a  fre 
quented  thoroughfare  —  a  window  heaped 
with  battered  helmets  and  emptied  shells  that 
drew  the  idle  curiosity  or  the  poignant  inter 
est  of  the  passer-by.  Bandages,  sweaters, 
iodine-tubes  filled  her  thoughts  and  her  hands. 
And  Althea,  in  company  with  several  sprightly 
and  entertaining  young  girls  of  her  own  set, 
began  to  pick  up  some  elementary  notions  in 
nursing. 

"Why,  it's  the  most  delightfully  absorbing 
thing  I've  ever  done!"  she  declared.  A  new 
world  was  dawning  —  a  red  world  that  not 
all  of  us  have  been  fated  to  meet  so  young. 

Raymond  Prince  saw  all  these  preparations 
and  took  them  as  a  spectacle.  He  was  now 
frankly  but  an  onlooker  in  life,  and  he  gazed 
at  big  things  from  their  far  rim.  He  had  no 
spare  funds  to  put  into  federal  hands,  and 
felt  by  no  means  able  to  afford  the  conversion 
of  any  of  his  few  remaining  investments  with 
a  loss  of  nearly  half  his  present  returns.  He 
viewed  a  patriotic  parade  or  two  from  the 
[  250  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

curbstone  and  attended  now  and  then  some 
patriotic  meeting  in  the  public  parks  —  a  flag- 
raising,  for  example.  On  these  occasions  he 
preferred  to  stand  at  some  remove,  so  that  it 
would  be  unnecessary  to  raise  his  hat:  the 
requirement  of  a  formal  salute  made  him 
distressingly  self-conscious.  Yet  he  was  dis 
pleased  if  other  men,  no  nearer,  failed  to  lift 
theirs;  and  he  would  be  indignant  when  young 
fellows,  engaged  in  games  near  by,  gave  the 
exercises  no  heed  at  all. 

In  one  of  the  parades  the  flag  of  France 
went  by.  This  was  a  picturesque  and  semi- 
exotic  event;  it  stirred  some  memories  of 
early  days  abroad,  and  Raymond,  with  an 
effort,  did,  stiffly  and  with  an  obvious  (even 
an  obtrusive)  self-consciousness,  manage  to 
get  off  his  hat.  A  highly  vocal  young  man 
alongside  looked  at  this  cold  and  creaking 
manoeuvre  with  disapproval,  even  disgust. 

"Can't  you  holler?"  he  asked. 

No,  Raymond  could  not  "holler."     The 

dead  hand  of  conscious  propriety  was  upon 

him,  checking  any  momentum  that  might  lead 

to  a  spontaneous  expression  of  patriotic  feel- 

l    251    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

ing.  The  generous  human  juices  could  not 
run  —  could  not  even  get  started.  When  he 
said  good-bye  to  Albert,  it  was  not  as  to  a  son, 
nor  even  to  a  friend's  son.  Albert  himself 
might  have  objected  to  any  emotional  expres 
sion  that  was  too  clearly  to  be  seen;  but  he 
would  have  welcomed  one  which,  cloaked  in 
an  unembarrassing  obscurity,  might  at  least 
have  been  felt.  Johnny  McComas  frankly 
let  himself  "go,"  not  only  with  Tom,  but  with 
Albert  too.  Albert  could  not  but  think  within 
himself  that  it  was  all  somewhat  overdone; 
he  was  a  bit  abashed,  even  if  not  quite  shame 
faced.  But  the  recollection  of  Johnny's  warm 
hand-clasp  and  vibrant  voice  sometimes  came 
to  comfort  him,  in  camp  across  the  water,  at 
times  when  the  picture  of  his  own  father's 
chill  adieux  brought  little  aid. 

IV 

A  few  brief  months  ended  the  foreign  serv 
ice  of  both  our  young  men.  Albert  came 
home  invalided,  and  Tom  McComas  along 
with  others,  lay  dead  between  the  opposing 
lines  of  trenches.  His  father  would  not,  at 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

first,  credit  the  news.  His  son's  very  strength 
and  vigor  had  helped  build  up  his  own  exu 
berant  optimism.  It  simply  could  not  be;  his 
son,  his  only  remaining  son,  a  happy  husband, 
a  gratified  parent  .  .  .  But  the  truth  bore  in, 
as  the  truth  will,  and  McComas  had  his  days 
of  rebellious  —  almost  of  blasphemous  —  pro 
test.  The  proud  monument  at  Roselands  was 
taking  a  cruel  toll.  His  other  son  was  com 
memorated  on  the  third  side  of  its  base;  but 
though  a  fresh  unf rayed  flag  waved  for  months 
over  turf  below  which  no  one  lay,  it  was  long 
before  that  great  granite  block  came  to  betray 
to  the  world  this  latest  and  cruelest  bereave 
ment. 

Albert,  whose  injuries  had  made  him  ap 
pear  as  likely  to  be  a  useless  piece  on  the  board 
for  longer  than  the  army  surgeons  thought 
worth  while,  was  sent  back  home  and  made 
his  convalescence  under  the  care  of  his  mother; 
within  her  house,  indeed  —  for  his  father  had 
no  quarters  to  offer  him.  Among  McComas's 
flower-beds  and  garden-paths  he  enjoyed  the 
ministrations  of  a  physician  other  and  better 
than  any  that  practices  on  those  fields  of 
[  253  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

hate  —  one  who  complemented  the  prosaic 
physical  cares  required  for  the  body  with  an 
affluent  stream  of  healing  directed  toward 
both  mind  and  heart.  He  had  come  back  to 
be  a  hero  to  Althea,  with  evidences  of  his 
heroism  graved  on  his  own  bruised  form. 

"Hasn't  he  been  wonderful  1"  said  Althea 
to  her  girl  friends;  and  Albert  volunteered 
few  concrete  facts  that  might  qualify  or  de 
tract  from  her  ideal. 

Those  few  months  comprised  his  contribu 
tion  to  the  cause.  He  mended  more  rapidly 
than  might  have  been  expected,  and  soon  be 
gan  to  feel  the  resurgence  of  those  belliger 
encies  which  are  proper  to  the  nature  of  the 
healthy  young  male.  But  his  belligerencies 
were  not  at  all  militaristic.  He  had  seen  war 
at  short  range,  knew  what  it  was,  and  desired 
it  no  more.  He  meant  to  let  loose  his  energies, 
as  soon  as  might  be,  in  that  other  warfare, 
business;  it  would  be  after  the  manner  of  a 
great-grandfather  of  whom  a  tradition  per 
sisted,  and  after  the  close  pattern  of  a  Mc- 
Comas  still  before  his  eyes.  A  hero,  if  they 
wished;  but  a  hero  with  money  in  his  pocket. 
[  254  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

Meanwhile,  McComas  looked  at  his  grand 
son  and  writhed.  So  many  openings,  so  many 
things  to  be  done;  yet  what  future  aid  had  he 
to  count  on  for  carrying  along  his  line  and  for 
reaping  the  opportunities  in  his  field?  A  child 
of  four,  in  rompers,  pushing  a  little  wheel 
barrow  of  pebbles  along  garden-paths.  The 
years  dragged.  It  was  all  too  great  an  irony. 

He  sent  for  Albert.  Albert  still  limped  a 
little,  but  it  was  not  to  be  for  long. 

"You've  done  enough  for  your  country," 
he  declared  with  blunt  emphasis.  "Now  do 
something  for  me.  You're  almost  well?" 

"I  think  so." 

"You  want  to  pitch  in?" 

"I  do." 

"You  want  to  amount  to  something?" 
continued  McComas,  pausing  on  the  edge  of 
an  invidious  bit  of  characterization. 

"Of  course." 

"You  would  like  to  come  with  me?" 

"Yes."  Surely  his  own  father  could  not 
help  him  to  a  future. 

"Well,  take  your  choice.  What  do  you 
want?  Bank?" 

[    255    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

But  Albert  had  heard  something  about 
banks.  Bank  clerks,  in  these  close-knit  days, 
when  anybody  who  fell  out  of  the  lock-step 
was  lost,  were  but  a  sort  of  financial  militia. 
Even  if  he  were  pushed  along  with  the  friend 
liest  zeal,  it  might  be  years  before  he  reached 
the  place  and  the  end  desired.  Nor  had  he 
much  more  fondness  for  growing  up  under 
the  eye  of  McComas  than  under  that  of  his 
own  father. 

"Bank?"  repeated  McComas. 

"No." 

McComas  grinned.  It  was  the  grin  he  used 
when  greatly  pleased. 

"One  of  those  Western  concerns?" 

"Yes,"  said  Albert;  "send  me  West." 

When  Raymond  heard  that  Albert  had  cast 
in  his  lot  with  McComas  and  meant  soon 
to  leave  for  Colorado,  he  winced.  Albert,  to 
him,  was  still  a  boy,  and  this  term  in  the 
West  but  another  kind  of  schooling.  "Just  as 
his  mother  tried  to  influence  him  before," 
said  Raymond  to  me  bitterly,  "so  McComas 
will  influence  him  now."  And  I  could  not 
deny  that  McComas  had  the  whip  hand. 
[  256  1 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

The  unintermittency  of  business  correspond 
ence,  the  cogency  of  a  place  on  the  pay 
roll  .  .  . 

No,  it  was  not  to  be  denied  that  Raymond 
had  lost  Albert  finally. 

And  Althea  went  to  the  train,  to  see  him 
off  —  as  to  another  war. 


"Finally"  —  perhaps  I  have  used  the  word 
too  soon. 

I  dropped  in  on  Raymond,  one  evening,  at 
his  private  hotel.  It  was  about  four  months 
after  Albert's  departure  for  the  West.  His 
quarters  seemed  as  snugly  comfortable  as 
ever,  and  as  completely  adapted  to  his  ulti 
mately  discovered  personality  and  its  peculiar 
requirements.  Raymond  master  of  a  big 
house!  Raymond  leading  a  public  life! 

But  he  himself  was  perturbed.  It  was  a 
letter  from  Albert  —  it  was  two  or  three  let 
ters,  in  fact. 

"He  says  he  is  going  to  marry  her." 

"Her?" 

"Althea.  Althea  McComas." 
[    257    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

Albert,  in  the  West,  had  done  well.  He  had 
taken  hold  immediately,  decisively.  The  ini 
tiative  which  would  never  have  developed 
under  his  father  had  been  liberated  during  his 
war  service  and  was  now  mounting  to  a  still 
higher  pitch  among  the  mountains. 
'>.  "He  is  going  to  do,"  McComas  had  told 
me,  after  the  second  month.  "He  is  a  won 
der,"  he  had  said,  later. 

Be  that  as  it  may.  McComas  was  doubtless 
inclined  to  the  favorable  view.  He  had  de 
termined  in  advance  that  Albert  was,  to  suc 
ceed.  Albert  was  meeting,  successfully,  known 
expectations  of  success  —  as  a  young  man  may. 

"He  started  so  well,"  said  his  father.  "And 
now  ..." 

"And  now?" 

"Now  he  wants  to  marry  the  daughter  of 
a  stable-boy!" 

"Raymond,"  I  saidf  "drop  the  'stable- 
boy.'  That  was  never  true;  and  if  it  were  it 
would  have  no  relevancy  here  and  now." 

"I  should  say  not!  Why,  Albert  —" 

"You  have  told  him?   He  knows  your  — 
He  knows  the  —  the  legend?" 
[    258    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

"He  does.  And  as  you  see,  it  makes  no 
difference  to  him." 

"Why  should  it?  Why  should  he  care  for 
early  matters  that  were  over  and  past  long 
years  before  he  was  born?  He  sees  what  he 
sees.  He  feels  what  he  feels." 

"He  feels  McComas." 

"Why  shouldn't  he?  Who  would  n't?" 

Raymond  relapsed  into  a  moody  silence. 
I  saw,  presently,  that  he  was  trying  to  break 
from  it.  He  had  another  consideration  to 
offer. 

"And  then,"  he  began,  "about  —  his 
mother.  He  must  have  understood  —  some 
thing.  He  must  know  —  by  now." 

"Know?"  I  returned.  "If  he  does,  he  has 
the  advantage  over  all  the  rest  of  us.  7  don't 
'know/  You  don't  'know.'  Neither  does 
anybody  else.  Another  old  matter  —  as  well 
rectified  as  society  and  its  usages  can  manage, 
and  best  left  alone." 

"Well,  it's  —  it's  indelicate.  Albert  ought 
to  feel  that." 

"  Raymond ! "  I  protested.  "  We  must  leave 
it  to  the  young  to  smooth  over  the  rough  old 
[  259  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

places  and  to  salve  the  aching  old  sores. 
That's  their  great  use  and  function." 

"Not  Albert's,"  he  said  stubbornly.  "I 
don't  want  him  to  do  it,  and  I  don't  want  it 
done  in  that  way." 

Another  silence.  I  could  see  that  he  was 
gathering  force  for  still  another  objection. 

"It's  a  desertion,"  said  the  undying  egoist. 
"It's  a  piece  of  treachery.  It's  a  going  over 
to  the  enemy." 

"If  you  mean  McComas,  Albert  went  over 
months  ago.  And  he  does  n't  seem  to  have 
lost  anything  by  doing  so,"  I  ventured  to 
add. 

"This  marriage  would  clinch  it,  would 
confirm  it.  I  should  lose  him  at  last,  and 
completely,  just  as  I  have  lost  —  every 
thing." 

"Raymond,"  I  could  scarcely  keep  from 
saying,  "you  deceive  yourself.  You  have 
really  never  cared  for  Albert  at  all.  The  only 
concern  here  is  your  own  pride  —  the  futile 
working  of  a  will  that  is  too  weak  to  get  its 
own  way."  ^ 

But  I  kept  silence,  and  he  continued  the 
[  260  J 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

silence.  Yet  I  felt  that  he  was  gathering  force 
for  the  greatest  objection  of  all. 

"I  have  heard  them  spoken  of,"  he  said, 
after  a  little,  "as  —  as  brother  and  sister. 
For  them  to  marry!  It's  unseemly." 

"Raymond!"  I  protested  again,  with  even 
more  vigor  than  before.  "  Why  must  you  say 
a  thing  like  that?" 

"The  same  father  and  mother  —  now.  Liv 
ing  together  —  going  about  together  as  mem 
bers  of  one  family  .  .  .  They  did,  you  know." 

"Yes,  for  a  few  weeks  in  the  year.  'One 
family'?  What  is  the  mere  label?  Nothing. 
What  is  the  real  situation?  Everything.  Of 
blood-relationship  not  a  trace.  Why,  even 
cousins  marry  —  but  here  are  two  strains 
absolutely  different.  .  .  .  Have  you,"  I  asked, 
"have  you  brought  up  this  point  with  — 
Albert?" 

Raymond  glanced  at  the  letters. 

"You  have!  And  he  says  what  I  say!" 

Raymond  put  the  letters  away. 

Albert  had  doubtless  said  much  more  — 
and  said  it  with  the  vigor  of  indignant 
youth. 

[    261    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

VI 

At  a  wedding  the  father  of  the  bridegroom 
need  not  be  conspicuous  —  least  of  all  when 
the  wedding  takes  place  in  a  church.  He  may 
avoid,  better  than  at  a  home  wedding,  too 
close  contact  with  the  various  units  of  the 
bridal  party.  In  view  of  such  considerations, 
Raymond  Prince  was  able  to  be  present, 
with  discomfort  minimized,  at  his  son's  mar 
riage. 

We  attended,  too,  of  course.  My  wife  has 
a  woman's  fondness  for  weddings  —  and  so 
has  our  Elsie. 

It  came  in  June.  The  church  was  the 
church  —  the  church  with  the  elms  and  ash- 
trees  around  it,  the  triangular  lawn  with  the 
hydrangeas  and  elderberry-bushes  blossoming 
here  and  there,  and  the  gardens  and  planta 
tions  of  private  wealth  looking  across  from 
all  sides;  the  church  where  everybody  who  is 
anybody  gets  married  as  a  matter  of  course  — 
at  that  time  of  year;  the  church  which  has 
plenty  of  room  for  limousines  on  both  sides 
of  its  converging  streets,  and  on  a  third  cross- 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

street  close  by;  the  church  which  has  the 
popular  and  sympathetic  rector,  who  has 
known  you  ever  since  you  were  a  boy  (or 
girl),  the  competent  organist,  and  the  valiant 
surpliced  choir  (valiant  though  small);  the 
church  which,  under  its  broad  squat  tower 
and  low  spire,  possesses,  about  its  altar-rail, 
room  for  many  palms  and  rubber-plants  and 
for  as  many  bridesmaids  and  ushers  as  the 
taste  of  the  high  contracting  parties  may 
require :  —  a  space  reached  by  a  broad  flight 
of  six  or  seven  steps,  and  wide  enough  for  any 
deployment,  high  enough  for  the  whole  as 
semblage  to  see,  and  grand  enough  (with  its 
steps  and  all)  to  make  a  considerable  effect 
when  the  first  notes  of  the  Wedding  March 
sound  forth  and  the  newly  wedded  couple 
walk  down  and  out  into  married  life. 

"Be  married  in  your  uniform!"  Johnny 
McComas  had  said  effusively. 

"Well,  I'm  not  in  the  service,  now  .  .  ." 
replied  Albert. 

"You  have  been,  haven't  you?  Haven't 
you?"  Johnny  repeated,  as  if  there  could  be 
two  answers. 

(    263    ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

"Why,  I  was  only  a  private  .  .  ."  Albert 
submitted. 

"So  were  lots  of  other  good  fellows." 

"It's  soiled,"  said  Albert.  "There's  a 
stain  on  the  shoulder." 

"All  the  better.  We've  done  something  for 
the  country.  Let  those  people  know  it." 

So  Albert  walked  down  the  aisle  in  khaki. 

Althea  was  in  white  —  my  wife  named  the 
material  expertly.  She  wore  a  long  veil.  There 
were  flower-girls,  too,  —  my  wife  knew  their 
names. 

"She's  the  most  beautiful  bride  I  ever 
saw!"  my  wife  declared.  "This  is  the  most 
beautiful  wedding  I  ever  attended!"  She  al 
ways  says  that. 

Johnny  McComas  was  in  white,  too.  As 
he  stood  beside  the  bridal  pair  he  seemed  al 
most  too  festive,  too  estival,  too  ebullient  for 
this  poor  earth  of  ours.  His  wife,  whose  cos 
tume  I  will  not  describe  and  whose  state  of 
mind  I  shall  not  explore,  showed  a  subdued 
sedateness  —  though  a  glad  —  which  restored 
the  balance. 

Raymond  Prince  saw  the  ceremony  from 
[  264  ] 


ON  THE  STAIRS 

one  of  the  back  pews.  If  he  attended  the  out- 
of-door  reception  at  the  house,  it  must  have 
been  but  briefly:  I  quite  missed  him  there. 
For  him  the  wedding  proper  had  been  less  a 
ceremony  than  a  parade.  I  can  fancy  how  he 
resented  the  organist's  grand  outburst  and  the 
triumphal  descent  (undeniably  effective)  of 
the  bridal  party  over  those  six  or  seven  steps. 
Again  he  was  an  unregarded  and  negligible 
spectator.  I  presume  he  missed  Johnny's 
hand  in  Albert's,  and  Johnny's  pressure  on 
Albert's  shoulder  —  the  one  with  the  stain; 
and  I  hope  he  did.  It  was  the  hand  of  the 
stronger,  taking  possession.  "My  prop,  my 
future  mainstay!"  said  Johnny's  action. 

And  it  was  as  an  unregarded  and  negligi 
ble  spectator  —  now  his  permanent  role  — 
that  Raymond  Prince  took  the  slow  train 
back  to  town. 


THE  END 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U   .   S   .  A 


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